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THE FREEDOM OF 
FAITH 



By THEODORE T. HUNGER 

AUTHOR OF "on l-HE TtLRBSHOIiD." 



" Peace settles where the intellect is meek ; 
The faith Heaven strengthens where He moulds the creed.*' 

Wordsworth. 




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5 J 5 J ) 



5 5'j^3 O-JO 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
C5^ EtiicrjSitre ^vzSi, Camfirttrfle 




Copyright, 1883, 
Bt THEODORE T. HUNGER 

All rights reserved. 



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The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. ^ 
Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company. 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 028050 



1 



DEDICATED 

TO 

E. D. M. 



CONTENTS. 



—4 

PJL6B. 

Peefatort Essay: "The New Theology" ..... 1 

SERMONS. 

I. 

On Reception of New Truth 45 

IL 
God our Shield. 1 71 

IIL 
God our Reward. II 91 

IV. 
Love to the Christ as a Person ...•,•..• 107 

V. 
The Christ's Pity 129 

VI. 
The Christ as a Preacher ...••. 149 

VII. 
Land Tenure ...Qee. 169 

vnL 

Moral Environment 191 

IX. 
Immortality and Science •••o... 215 



VI CONTENTS. 

^* PAGE 

Immortality and Nature «..•.. 235 

XL 

Immortality as taught by the Christ 255 

XII. 
The Christ's Treatment of Death 271 

XIII. 
The Kesurrection from the Dead .••••••• 293 

XIV. 
The Method of Penalty ,. 315 

XV. 
The Judgment ••«. 337 

XVI. 
Life a Gain .........••• 357 

XVIL 
Things to be Awaited •••••• 877 



"THE NEW THEOLOGY." 



" Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy 
Him forever." — Westminster Catechism. 

"I shall merely enumerate a few of the most common of these feel- 
ings that present obstacles to the pursuit or propagation of truth : Aver- 
sion to doubt ; desire of a supposed happy medium ; the love of system ; 
the dread of the character of inconsistency; the love of novelty; the 
dread of innovation ; undue deference to human authority ; the love of 
approbation, and the dread of censure; regard to seeming expediency." 
— Whately^s Annotations on Bacon' s Essay on Truth, page 10. 

" The principles on which I have taught: First. The establishment 
of positive truth, instead of the negative destruction of error. Secondly. 
That truth is made up of two opposite propositions, and not found in a 
via media between the two. Thirdly. That spiritual truth is discerned 
by the spirit, instead of intellectually in propositions ; and, therefore, 
Truth should be taught suggestively, not dogmatically. Fourthly. That 
belief in the Human character of Christ's Humanity must be antecedent 
to belief in His Divine origin. Fifthly. That Christianity, as its teach- 
ers should, works from the inward to the outward, and not vice versa. 
Sixthly. The soul of goodness in things evil." — Life of F. W. RoherU 
wn, Vol. ii. p. 160. 



PREFATORY ESSAY. 



"THE NEW THEOLOGY." 

The purpose of this Essay is to state, so far as 
is now possible, some of the main features of that 
phase of present thought popularly known as " The 
New Theology : " to indicate the lines on which it 
is moving, to express something of its spirit, and to 
give it so much of definite form that it shall no 
longer suffer from the charge of vagueness. 

I use, however, the phrase New Theology sim- 
ply as one of convenience, disclaiming for it any 
real propriety, and even denying its appropriate- 
ness. For the thing that it represents is not new 
nor yet old. It might better be described — as it 
has been — as a Renaissance : for the conceptions 
of Christian doctrine that are now floating in the 
minds of men, with promise of crystallizing into 
form, are not of recent origin ; they prevailed in 
the first centuries of the church, while the stream 
ran clear from the near fountain, and they have ap- 
peared all along in individual minds and schools, as 
the higher peaks of a mountain range catch the 
sunshine, while the base is enveloped in mist and 
shadow, — not many, and often far separate, but 
enough to show the trend, and to bear witness to 
the light. Neither is this phrase used to designate 



4 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

a class, nor to separate one set of men from another. 
The distinguishing line does not run between dif- 
ferent minds, but rather runs through all minds. 
Every calm, reflecting person now interested in the- 
ology may detect in himself a line of demarkation 
between sympathies that cling to the old and that 
reach out after the new. With the noisy, thought- 
less shouters for the new because it seems to be 
new, and with the sullen, obstinate sticklers for the 
old because it is the old, these pages have little to 
do. There is, however, a large class of earnest, 
reflecting minds who recognize a certain develop- 
ment of doctrine, a transfer of emphasis, a change 
of temper, a widened habit of thought, a broader 
research, that justify the use of some term by which 
to designate it. This class need little teaching, save 
that of their own trained intelligence ; they know 
the age and its requirements ; they know the Scrip- 
tures, the spirit of their teachings and the law of 
their interpretation ; they know how to hold them- 
selves before the philosophies in whose court the main 
questions are decided ; they have open eyes before 
the growing knowledge of the world and the un- 
folding manifestations of God. But while this class 
have been quietly passing from one phase of thought 
to another, without shock to their minds or detri- 
ment to their characters, there is a far larger class 
who are thrown into confusion by the change it has 
observed in the other. Only the trained intellect 
passes easily through changes of thought and belief : 
others see in change only a loss ; they regard modifi- 
cation of view as abandonment ; they cannot readily 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 6 

adjust their eyes to the increasing light. Hence 
there is at present a sad state of popular confusion 
as to religious belief. The people hear new state- 
ments in regard to inspiration, atonement, retribu- 
tion, and the war of words that follows in councils 
and from the press and pulpit and platform intensi- 
fies their confusion, — stormy assertion, passionate 
denial, retreats into the past on one side, and blind 
rushing into the jaws of a material philosophy on 
the other side, Calvin or Herbert Spencer, the old 
creed or no Bible, blind fear offset by blind au- 
dacity. Meanwhile, "the hungry sheep look up 
and are not fed ; " " the people perish for lack of 
knowledge ; " they know not what to believe. They 
cannot be fed or quieted by exhortations to believe 
what they have always believed, nor are they fed 
or content when assured that every-day morality is 
all they need to concern themselves about, or that 
all theology is to be reconstructed, in due time, on 
a basis of physical evolution. For, while there is, 
without doubt, a strong popular drift towards ma- 
terialism, there is also a counter, protesting drift 
that flows out of the inextinguishable spiritual in- 
stincts. When religion is presented to men envel- 
oped in a material philosophy, they scent danger, 
and turn from it "blindly wise," driven by an in- 
stinctive fear lest they be " canceled in the world 
of sense." But the people cannot themselves for- 
mulate these instincts and reduce them to their 
rational equivalents ; they cannot make the transi- 
tion from that which no longer feeds and satisfies 
to the fresher conceptions that can. Hence it is 



6 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

largely an age of arrested belief, dangerous to all, 
fatal to many. The blame is thickly and widely 
scattered about, — on pulpit and pew, on science 
and philosophy, on theologians and editors, on the 
orthodox and the heterodox ; let us each take our 
share, for there is a certain deep homogeneity of 
the age that renders it accountable for its condition. 
There is, however, this sure ground of hope : that 
the great body of mankind will not long live with- 
out a faith. 

While what is called the New Theology is, in 
part, the cause of this condition, it also finds in it 
the reason of its being. It is not a disturber of the 
peace in the realm of belief, but comes forward to 
meet the unconscious thought and the conscious 
need of the people, and, if possible, do something 
towards quelling the anarchy of fear and doubt that 
now prevails. It is not a vague thing, 

" Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
The other powerless to be born," 

but a definite movement, that attempts to link the 
truth of the past with the truth of the present 
in the interest of the Christian faith. It justifies 
itself by the belief that it can minister to faith, and 
by a conviction that the total thought of an age 
ought to have the greatest possible unity, or, in 
plainer phrase, that its creed ought not to antago- 
nize its knowledge. 

In attempting to give some expression of the 
New Theology, I wish to state with the utmost 
emphasis that I do not speak for any party, but 
only describe things as I see them. And especially 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 7 

would I disclaim any ex-cathedra tone that may 
seem to issue from any form of words. I speak 
from the stand-point of the sharpest and even most 
isolated individuality, — for myself alone. 

I will first refer to certain negative features, in- 
dicating what it is not; and then more fully to its 
positive character. 

1. It does not propose to do without a theology. 

It seeks no such transformation of method or form 
that it can no longer claim the name of a science. It 
does not resolve belief into sentiment, nor etherealize 
it into mysticism, nor lower it into mere altruism ; 
yet it does not deny an element of sentiment, it ac- 
knowledges an element of mysticism, and it insists 
on a firm basis in ethics. It is the determined foe of 
agnosticism, yet it recognizes a limitation of human 
knowledge. While it insists that theology is a sci- 
ence, and that therefore its parts should be coor- 
dinate and mutually supporting, and an induction 
from all the facts known to it, it realizes that it 
deals with eternal realities that cannot be wholly 
compassed, and also with the mysteries and contra- 
dictions of a world involved in mystery and beset 
by contradictory forces. If it finds itself driven into 
impenetrable mystery, as it inevitably must, it pre- 
fers to take counsel of the higher sentiments and 
better hopes of our nature, rather than project into 
it the frame-work of a formal logic, and insist on its 
conclusion. It does not abjure logic, but it refuses 
to be held by what is often deemed logic. While it 
believes in a harmony of doctrines, it regards with 
suspicion what have been known as systems of the- 



8 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

ology, on the ground that it rejects the methods by 
which they are constructed. It will not shape a doc* 
trine in order that it may fit another which has been 
shaped in the same fashion, — a merely mechanical 
interplay, and seeking a mechanical harmony. In- 
stead, it regards theology as an induction from the 
revelations of God — in the Bible, in history, in 
the nation, in the family, in the material creation, 
and in the whole length and breadth of human life. 
It will have, therefore, all the definiteness and har- 
mony it can find in these revelations, but it will 
have no more, since it regards these revelations as 
under a process still enacting, and not as under a 
finality. The modern authors whom it most con- 
sults must be regarded as holding a theology worthy 
of the name, — Erskine, Campbell, McLeod, Mau- 
rice, Stanley, Robertson, the Hare brothers, Bush- 
nell ; and if we enumerate its representatives among 
the living, we must recite the names of those who 
are eminent in every form of thought and in every 
work of holy charity. 

2. The New Theology does not part with the his- 
toric faith of the church, but rather seeks to put 
itself in its line while recognizing a process of de- 
velopment. It does not propose to commit " retro- 
spective suicide " at every fresh stage of advance. 
It holds to progress by slow and cosmic growth 
rather than by cataclysmal leaps. It allies itself 
even with the older rather than the later theologies, 
and finds in the early Greek theology conceptions 
more harmonious with itself than those in the the- 
ology shaped by Augustine.^ 

1 See the very able and suggestive article, by Prof. A= V. G. Allen, on 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 9 

3. It does not reject the specific doctrines of the 
church of the past. It holds to the Trinity, though 
indifferent to the use of the word, but not to a 
formal and psychologically impossible Trinity ; to 
the divine sovereignty, but it does not make it 
the corner-stone of its system, preferring for that 
place the divine righteousness, i. e., a moral rather 
than a dynamic basis ; to the Incarnation, not as a 
mere physical event, for that has entered into many 
religions, but as the entrance into the world through 
a person of a moulding and redeeming force in hu- 
manity, — the central and broadest fact of theology ; 
to the Atonement as a divine act and process of 
ethical and practical import — not as a mystery of 
the distant heavens and isolated from the strug- 
gle of the world, but a comprehensible force in the 
actual redemption of the world from its evil ; to the 
Resurrection as covering the whole essential nature 
of man ; to Judgment as involved in the develop- 
ment of a moral nature ; to the eternal awards of 
conduct considered as laws and principles of charac- 
ter, but not necessarily set in time-relations; to hu- 
man sinfulness under a conception of moral freedom ; 
to Justification by faith in the sense of a faith that, 
by its law, induces an actual righteousness — a sim- 
ple, rational process realized in huuian experience ; 
to Regeneration and Sanctification by the Spirit 
as most imperative operations based on the utmost 
need, and on the actual presence and power of the 
Spirit in the life of humanity. It does not explain 

"The Theological Renaissance of the Nineteenth Century," in the 
Vrinceton Review^ November, 1882, and January, 1883. 



10 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

away from these doctrines their substance, nor min- 
imize them, nor aim to do else than present them 
as revealed in the Scriptures and as developed in 
history and in the life of the church and of the 
world. 

4. It is not iconoclastic in its temper ; it is not 
pervaded by a spirit of denial, but is constructive — 
taking away nothing without supplying its place; 
it does not, indeed, find so much occasion to take 
away and replace as to uncover and bring to light. 
Believing that revelation is not so much from God 
as of God, its logical attitude is that of seeing and 
interpreting. 

5. It is not disposed to find a field and organiza- 
tion outside of existing churches, conscious that it 
is building on that Eternal Foundation which alone 
has given strength to the church in every age. It 
claims only that liberty whereunto all are called 
in the church of Christ. It asserts that the real 
ground of membership in the church is fidelity to 
the faith, and that this ground is not forfeited be- 
cause it refuses to assent to human and formal con- 
ditions that the church has taken on, and which are 
not of the substance of the faith. Emphasizing as 
it does the headship of Christ in the visible as well 
as invisible church, it would retain its place in the 
church on the basis of its loyalty to Christ and as 
its all-sufficient warrant, paying small heed to a 
narrow, ecclesiastical logic that now confounds, and 
now distinguishes between, the bounds of the visi- 
ble body and the breadth ani freedom of Christ's 
church 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 11 

I pass now to the positive features of the New 
Theology. 

1. It claims for itself a somewhat larger and 
broader use of the reason than has been accorded 
to theology. 

! And by reason we do not mean mere speculation 
nor a formal logic, but that full exercise of our na- 
ture which embraces the intuitions, the conscience, 
the susceptibilities, and the judgment, ^. e., man's 
whole inner being. Especially it makes much of 
the intuitions — the universal and spontaneous ver- 
dicts of the soul ; and in this it deems that it allies 
itself with the Mind through which the Christian 
revelation is made. 

The fault of the theology now passing is that it 
insists on a presentation of doctrines in such a way 
as perpetually to challenge the reason. By a logic 
of its own — a logic created for its own ends, and 
not a logic drawn from the depth and breadth of 
human life — it frets and antagonizes the funda- 
mental action of human nature. If Christianity 
has any human basis it is its entire reasonableness. 
It must not only sit easily on the mind, but it must 
ally itself with it in all its normal action. If it 
chafes it, if it is a burden, if it antagonizes, it de- 
tracts from itself ; the human mind cannot be de- 
tracted from. Man is a knower ; the reason never 
ceases to be less than itself without losing all right 
to use itself as reason. Consequently a full adjust- 
ment between reason and Christianity is steadily to 
be sought. If there is conflict, uneasiness, burden- 
Bomeness, the cause is to be looked for in interpreta* 



12 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

tion rather than in the human reason. For, in the last 
analysis, revelation — so far as its acceptance is con- 
cerned — rests on reason, and not reason on revela- 
tion. The logical order is, j&rst reason, and then 
revelation — the eye before sight. It is just here 
that a narrow and formal theology inserts its hurtful 
fallacy ; it says, Use your reason for ascertaining 
that a revelation is probable, and has been made, 
after which the only office of the mind is to accept 
the contents of the revelation without question, i. e., 
without other use of the reason than some small 
office of collating texts and drawing inferences. 
But this is formal and arbitrary. The mind accepts 
revelation because it accepts the substance of revela- 
tion. It does not stand outside upon some structure 
of logical inference that a revelation has been made, 
and therefore is to be accepted, but instead it enters 
into the material of the revelation, and plants its 
feet there. The reason believes the revelation be- 
cause in itself it is reasonable. Human nature — 
so far as it acts by itself — accepts Christianity 
because it establishes a thorough consensus with 
human nature ; it is agreeable in its nature to hu- 
man nature in its normal action. It wins its way 
on the man-ward side by winning the assent of the 
whole reasonable nature of man. The largest play 
must be allowed to this principle. It is thus that 
the light of thought enters into and guides all spir- 
itual processes, and discloses their reality. It is 
thus, and thus only, that the reason of man meets 
and recognizes the reason of God that is wrought 
into the revelation. Otherwise, belief is a mechan- 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 13 

ical thing, and spiritual processes become blind acta 
of the will. It is arbitrary and unscientific to use 
the reason up to a certain point, and then hood it 
with blinding restrictions ; to think and weigh and 
feel up to the point of the discovery of a revelation, 
and then remand thought and feeling to the back- 
ground, and so reduce the whole action of the mind 
to an acceptance of texts. Thought and feeling are 
as necessary for interpretation as for acceptance, 
and it is as legitimate for the reason to pass judg- 
ment upon the contents of revelation as upon the 
grounds of receiving it ; they are, in fact, identical. 
In brief, we accept the Christian faith because of 
the reasonableness of its entire substance, and not 
because we have somehow become persuaded that a 
revelation has been made. It is impossible to con- 
ceive of it as gaining foothold in the mind and 
heart in any other way, nor can faith in it be other- 
wise secured. And the revelation will be forever 
appealing to the reason ; playing into it as flame 
mingles with flame, and drawing from it that which 
is kindred with itself. The inmost principle of rev- 
elation is that the mind of God reveals itself to the 
mind of man ; and the basis of this principle is 
that one mind is made in the image of the other, 
and therefore capable of similar processes of thought 
and feeling. Revelation is not a disclosure of things 
to be done, or of bare facts pertaining to eter- 
nity, but is rather an unveiling of the thought and 
feeling of God to men, in response to which they 
become sons of the Most High. This is the hold 
that it has on humanity, and this is the method of 



14 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

its acting. Hence, in simple phrase, it must be on 
friendly terms with the human reason and heart. 
It is on such terms ; it is only through misinterpre- 
tation that it antagonizes the sober conclusions of 
universal reason and evokes the protest of the uni- 
versal human heart. 

If it be said that human nature is weakened and 
perverted by evil, and therefore cannot be relied on 
for just estimates of the contents of revelation, we 
answer that it is then equally unfit to form a judg- 
ment on the question of having or not having a rev 
elation. If reason can determine the universal 
point, it can determine the particular points ; if it 
can cover the whole, it can cover the parts. But, 
what is of greater moment, to attribute inability 
to the reason is to pave the way to Pyrrhonism. If 
I cannot know in such a way as to satisfy my rea- 
son, I must forever doubt. Here is where Pascal 
fails as a defender of the faith, holding that be- 
cause the reason is corrupted it can be sure of noth- 
ing, yet asserting the duty of belief, — a very mon- 
strosity of inconsistency ; yet he bravely accepts it, 
and has, at last, but one word for the questioner : 
" Do as I do : go to mass and use holy water." 
The impotence of his conclusion is the condemna- 
tion of his premise. 

There are indeed limits to reason, and it has in 
it an element of faith, but so far as it goes, it goes 
surely and firmly ; it is not a rotten foundation, it 
is not a broken reed, it is not a false light. It may 
be so sure that it can justly protest in the face 
of Heaven, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth 



THE NEW THEOLOGY, 16 

do right ? " It will be humble and docile and trust- 
ful, but these qualities are not abrogations of itself. 
It does not claim for itself the ability to measure 
the whole breadth and reach of truth ; it does not 
say, I will not believe what I cannot understand, 
for it knows full well that human reason is not 
commensurate with eternal truth. But this is quite 
different from silencing reason before questions that 
have been cast upon human nature, yet are so inter- 
preted as to violate every principle of human na- 
ture ; e. g.^ it is not called to hold its belief in God 
as a reasonable belief, and to accept a conception of 
God that throws it into a chaos of moral confusion 
and contradiction. To trust is a great duty; but as 
reason has an element of faith, so faith has an ele- 
ment of reason, and that element requires that the 
fundamental verdicts of human nature shall not be 
set aside. The lines on which trusting reason, or 
reasoning trust, proceed do not run straight into 
impenetrable mystery, and come back from that 
mystery to slay reason and well-nigh slay faith. 

The familiar illustration, drawn from the duty of 
the child to obey the parent without understand- 
ing why, is a partial fallacy. The highest relation 
between child and parent is that in which there 
is sympathetic obedience because the child under- 
stands why. "No longer do I call you servants; 
for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth : 
but I have called you friends ; for all things that I 
heard from my Father I have made known unto 
you." " Mine own know me, even as the Father 
knoweth me : " when the Rensed Version thus tells 



16 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

US that believers know Christ even as the Father 
knows him, there is not much room for mystery in 
the revelations of the Christ. 

This blind acceptance of revelation as something 
with which the reason has little to do, in respect to 
'j which the New Theology parts company with the 
Old, is based on the conception that revelation is 
grounded on miracle, ^. g., on sense, — a principle 
that Christ condemned over and over; "Blessed are 
they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 

2. The New Theology seeks to interpret the 
Scriptures in what may be called a more natural 
way, and in opposition to a hard, formal, unsympa- 
thetic, and unimaginative way. 

Its strongest denial and its widest divergence 
from the Old Theology lie here. It holds pro- 
foundly to inspiration, but it also holds that the 
Scriptures were written by living men, whose life 
entered into their writings ; it finds the color and 
temper of the writer's mind in his work; it finds 
also the temper and habit of the age ; it penetrates 
the forms of Oriental speech ; it seeks to read out 
of the mind and conception and custom of the wri- 
ter instead of reading present conceptions into his 
words. In brief, it reads the Scriptures as litera- 
ture, yet with no derogation from their inspiration. 
It refuses to regard the writers as automatic organs 
of the Spirit, — "moved," indeed, but not carried 
outside of themselves nor separated from their own 
ways and conceptions. It is thus that it regards 
the Bible as a living book; it is warm and vital 
with the life of a divine humanity, and thus it 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 17 

speaks to humanity. But as it was written by men 
in other ages and of other habits of speech, it needs 
to be interpreted; it is necessary to get back into 
the mind of the writer in order to get at the inspi- 
ration of his utterance ; for before there is an in- 
spired writing there is an inspired man, through 
whom only its meaning can be reached. This is a 
very different process from picking out texts here 
and there, and putting them together to form a doc- 
trine ; yet it is by such a process that systems of 
theology have been formed, and cast on society for 
acceptance. The New Theology does not proceed 
in such a way. The Old Theology reads the Scrip- 
tures with a lexicon, and weighs words as men 
weigh iron ; it sees no medium between the form 
of words and their first or preconceived meaning. 
It looks into the Bible as one looks through space, 
beyond the atmosphere, upon the sun, — seeing one 
point of glowing light, but darkness on every side ; 
one text of burning sense, but no atmosphere of con- 
text, or age, or custom, or temper of mind, or end 
in view. The New Theology does not tolerate the 
inconsistency of the Old, as it slowly gives up the 
theory of verbal inspiration, but retains views based 
on verbal inspiration. It will not remove foundations 
and prop up the superstructure with assertions. 

Again, it does not regard the Bible as a magical 
book ; it is not a diviner's rod ; it is not a charmed 
thing of intrinsic power, representing a far-off God. 
The New Theology remembers that the mass, the 
confessional, the priestly office, the intercession of 
saints, were the product of a tlieology that held to 

2 



18 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

a mechanical, outside God, and that these supersti- 
tions sprang from the demand of the human heart 
for a God near at hand. It remembers that when 
these superstitions were cast off and the theology- 
retained the Bible was put in their place, and with 
something of the same superstitious regard. Hence, 
it was not read naturally and in a free, off-hand 
way, as it was inspired and written, but in hard and 
artificial ways, and was used much as men use 
charms. The New Theology does not reduce to 
something less the inspiration of the Bible, nor does 
it yield to any theology in its sense of its supreme 
value in the redemption of the world ; but it holds 
it as purely instrumental, and not as magical in its 
power or method. It is a history of the highest 
form in which God is manifesting himself in the 
world, but it is not the manifestation itself; it is 
not a revelation, but is a history of a revelation ; it 
is a chosen and indispensable means of the redemp- 
tion of the world, but it is not the absolute means, 
^-that is in the Spirit. It is necessary to make 
this distinction in order to read it, otherwise it 
cannot be interpreted ; it lies outside the sphere of 
our rational nature, — a charmed mystery, before 
which we may sit in awe, but not a voice speaking 
to our thinking minds. 

Again: the New Theology is not disposed to 
limit its interpretation of the Scriptures by the priu' 
ciple contained in the phrase " the plain meaning 
of the words." This is a true principle, but it 
may be used in a narrow and untrue way. It is 
one of those phrases that wins immediate assent be* 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 19 

cause it flatters the popular mind, like the ap- 
peals to " common sense," — a trick under which a 
vast amount of error and slipshod belief has crept 
into the world. It is by an undue and exclusive 
use of this principle that a theology has been cre- 
ated intolerable to human nature. Now a theology 
cannot be forced on the human mind. Men may 
be required to believe what they do not like to be- 
lieve, but they cannot be forced to believe what 
they cannot believe, i, e.<, to believe against the 
universal voice of reason and heart and knowledge. 
There will first be silence, then denial and rejection, 
and all along inefiiciency or abnormal results. To 
escape from a theology so created, there must be 
a broader principle of interpretation than this of 
" the plain meaning of the words ; " or, rather, this 
principle must be enlarged, until it becomes some- 
thing quite different. There must be recognized 
the principle of moral evolution or development, — 
a principle that removes whatever difficulties some 
may feel as to Hebrew anthropomorphism ; it must 
be allowed that every writer of the Bible wrote un- 
der human limitations, and that it is within the 
province of the reason to discover the limitations 
and so get at the meaning, as it does with any other 
book, with only this difference, that when it thus 
reaches the meaning it is wholly trustworthy. 

Another principle is that the Bible, like the order 
of history, is a continually unfolding revelation of 
God ; it is a book of eternal laws and facts that are 
evolving their truth and reality in the process of 
history. Its full meaning is not yet disclosed; it 13 



20 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

an ever-opening book. It is always leading man in 
the right direction, but it does not show him at 
once, in clear light, the whole domain of truth. It 
is therefore a book to be constantly and freshly in- 
terpreted ; it may mean to-morrow more than it 
means to-day. This principle of " the plain mean- 
ing of the words " is to be used under other princi- 
ples and in connection with all possible knowledge. 
The point has recently been made by a critic of 
the Unitarian school that '' the Bible is an ortho- 
dox book." With profound respect for the honesty 
and ability of the critic, the New Theology re- 
gards with indifference a criticism that encourages 
the Old Theology to foster theories that the critic 
plainly sees can lead only to its final and utter 
collapse, provoking the instant and necessarily ex- 
pected inference that "we must revise our Bible 
or keep our creed." The New Theology agrees 
neither with the critic nor with the comment; it 
holds principles of interpretation that bind it nei- 
ther to the school represented by the one nor by the 
other. To assert an identity between the Bible and 
the theology of New England as it was sixty years 
ago is to ignore previous ages of church history, 
and scores of years since; it is to ignore all other 
theology, — the early Greek, the Arminian, the 
Mystical, and the Romish. Yet upon such a sum- 
mons, some are induced either to " revise the Bible 
or keep the creed." The New Theology will do nei- 
ther ; it refuses to be deceived by an " undistributed 
middle " of a syllogism ; it chooses instead to re» 
interpret the Bible, ^. g., find out what it actually 
means, and revise the creed if it is necessary. 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 21 

By what rule, under wliat impulse, for what rea- 
Bon, shall it do the former ? The answer is brief • 
When it must ; ^. g., when there is such an accumu- 
lation of knowledge and of evidence against the ap- 
parent meaning that the mind cannot tolerate the 
inconsistency, it must search the text to see if it 
will not bear a meaning, or rather does not contain 
a meaning, — indeed, was intended to convey a 
meaning that we have failed to catch, — consistent 
with ascertained facts. It is already a familiar pro- 
cess, as illustrated in the treatment of the first 
chapters of Genesis. The Bible receives no detri- 
ment from being interpreted under such a principle ; 
how much larger, in their truth, are these chapters 
than they were a century ago ! This is not a cha- 
meleon process ; it does not reduce the Bible to a 
pliant mass, to be shaped anew by every restless 
critic ; it does not deprive it of positive meaning 
and character. It regards it rather as a revelation 
of God, the full meaning of which is to be evolved 
in the history of the world, — a light that simply 
burns brighter as time goes on. It is this very 
characteristic that makes it a miraculous book, if 
we care so to name it. It is to be remembered, 
also, that the Bible generates the light in which it 
is to be interpreted, — " the master light of all our 
seeing; " it were well if that light were more used! 
There is no denial of the fact that doctrines now 
regarded as parts of orthodoxy are the reflections 
of the social condition in which they were formu- 
lated. The doctrines of divine sovereignty, of total 
depravity, and of the atonement are shot through 



22 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

with colors drawn from tlie corruption of Roman 
society, from the Roman sense of authority and the 
Roman forms of justice. The Bible furnished iso- 
lated texts for holding these conceptions, but the 
Bible, as a whole, did not furnish the conceptions ; 
had it been used to furnish conceptions of doc- 
trines, we would not now have what goes for ortho° 
doxy. But Rome passes, and the Bible endures ; 
the leaven of heathen society is eliminated, and the 
leaven of the Gospel works its slow transforma- 
tion in the world. It generates a sense of free- 
dom and humanity that renders impossible a belief 
in divine sovereignty, and human depravity, and 
legal atonement, and future retribution, as they 
were first formulated, and are still retained, in 
the Old Theology. The present universal protest 
against the old conception of retribution is due 
simply to the fact that the Gospel itself has trained 
the mind to such a point of tender, humane, and 
just feeling that it necessarily repudiates it. The 
defenders of the old view hurl the Bible, as though 
it were a missile, at doubters and deniers ; the New 
Theology says. Let us open it again, and read it 
in the light that it has kindled in our minds and in 
society, not despising the tenderness and human- 
ity which are its offspring. Whatever the Bible 
may be, it is not a Saturn, devouring its own chil- 
dren. 

3. The New Theology seeks to replace an exces- 
sive individuality by a truer view of the solidarity 
of the race. 

It does not deny a real individuality, it does not 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 23 

predicate an absolute solidarity, but simply removes 
the emphasis from one to the other. It holds that 
every man must live a life of his own, build himself 
up into a full personality, and give an account of 
himself to God : but it also recognizes the blurred 
truth that man's life lies in its relations; that it is i 
a derived and shared life ; that it is carried on and 
perfected under laws of heredity and of the family 
and the nation ; that while he is " himself alone " 
he is also a son, a parent, a citizen, and an insepa- 
rable part of the human race; that in origin and 
character and destiny he cannot be regarded as 
standing in a sharp and utter individuality. It 
differs from the Old Theology in a more thorough 
and consistent application of this distinction. That 
holds to an absolute solidarity in evil, relieved by 
a doctrine of election of individuals ; this holds to 
a solidarity running throughout the whole life of 
humanity in the world, — not an absolute solidarity, 
but one modified by human freedom. It is not dis- 
posed wholly to part company with the Old in re- 
spect to the " fall in Adam " (when the Scriptures, 
on this point, are properly interpreted), and hered- 
itary evil, and the like ; it sees in these conceptions 
substantial truths, when freed from their excessive- 
ness and their formal and categorical shapes, but it 
carries this solidarity into the whole life of man. 
If it is a fallen world, it is also a redeemed world ; 
if it is a lost world, it is a saved world ; the Christ 
is no less to it than Adam ; the divine humanity is 
no smaller than the Adamic humanity ; the Spirit 
is as powerful and as universal as sin ; the links 



24 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

that bind the race to evil are correlated by links 
equally strong binding it to righteousness. It goes, 
in a certain manner, with the Old Theology in its 
views of common evil, but it diverges from it in its 
conceptions of the redemptive and delivering forces 
by ascribing to them corresponding sweep. To re- 
peat : it does not admit that Christ is less to the 
race than Adam, that the Gospel is smaller than 
evil ; it does not consign mankind as a mass to a 
pit of common depravity, and leave it to emerge 
as individuals under some notion of election, or by 
solitary choice, each one escaping as he can and 
according to his " chance," but the greater part not 
escaping at all. It does not so read revelation and 
history and life, finding in them all a corporate 
element, "a moving altogether when it moves at 
all," — an interweaving of life with life that renders 
it impossible wholly to extricate the individual. It 
allies itself with the thought of the present age 
and the best thought of all ages, that mankind is 
moved by common forces, and follows common ten- 
dencies falling and rising together, partakers to- 
gether in all good and ill desert, verifying the 
phrase, " the life of humanity." It believes that 
the Spirit broods over the " evil world " as it 
brooded upon the chaos of old ; that humanity is 
charged with redemptive forces, wrought into the 
soul and into the divine institutions of the family 
and the nation, and whatever other relation binds 
man to man ; and it believes that these forces are 
not in vain. 

Still, it does not submerge the individual in the 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 25 

common life, nor free him from personal ill desert, 
nor take from him the crown of personal achieve- 
ment and victory. It simply strives to recognize 
the duality of truth, and hold it well poised. It 
turns our attention to the corporate life of man 
here in the world, — an individual life, indeed, but 
springing from common roots, fed by a common 
life, watched over by one Father, inspired by one 
Spirit, and growing to one end ; no man, no gener- 
iation, being " made perfect " by itself. Hence its 
ethical emphasis ; hence its recognition of the na- 
tion, and of the family, and of social and commer- 
cial life, as fields of the manifestation of God and 
of the operation of the Spirit ; hence its readiness 
to ally itself with all movements for bettering the 
condition of mankind, — holding that human soci- 
ety itself is to be redeemed, and that the world 
itself, in its corporate capacity, is being reconciled 
to God ; hence also an apparently secular tone, 
which is, however, but a widening of the field of 
the divine and spiritual. 

4. This theology recognizes a new relation to nat- 
ural science ; but only in the respect that it ignores 
the long apparent antagonism between the kingdoms 
of faith and of natural law, — an antagonism that 
cannot, from the nature of things, have a basis in 
reality. But while it looks on the external world 
as a revelation of God and values the truth it may 
reveal ; while even it recognizes in it analogies 
to the spiritual world and a typical similarity of 
method, it does not merge itself in natural science. 
It is not yet ready, and it shows no signs that it 



26 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

ever will be ready, to gather up its beliefs, and go 
over into the camp of natural science, and sit down 
under the manipulations of a doctrine of evolution, 
with its one category of matter and one invariable 
force. It is not ready to commit itself to a finite 
system, a merely phenomenal section of the uni- 
verse and of time, with no whence^ or whither^ or 
why^ — a system that simply supplies man with a 
certain kind of knowledge, but solves no problem 
that weighs on his heart, answers no question that 
he much cares to ask, and throws not one glimmer 
of additional light on his origin, his nature, or his 
destiny. It accepts gratefully the knowledge it dis- 
closes of the material universe, its laws and its pro- 
cesses ; it admits that science has anticipated theol- 
ogy in formulating the method of creation known 
as evolution, that it has corrected modern theology 
by suggesting a closer and more vital relation be- 
tween God and creation, and so has helped it throw 
off a mechanical theory and regain its forgotten the- 
ory of the divine immanence in creation. But far- 
ther than this it does not propose to go, for the sim- 
ple reason that it is the end of its journey in that 
direction. The New Theology, like the old, re- 
fuses to merge itself in a system that is both mate- 
rial and finite, and therefore incapable of a moral 
and spiritual conception. It denies that the uni- 
verse can be put into one category, that matter is 
inclusive of the spiritual, or what is deemed spirit- 
ual ; it denies that the material world is the only 
field of knowledge, and that its force is the only 
force acting in the world. It asserts the reality of 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 27 

the spiritual as above the material, of force that is 
other than that lodged in matter, of truth realized 
in another way than by induction from material 
facts, however fine their gradation, of an eternal 
existence and a human self-consciousness correlated 
in mutual knowledge and freedom and powero It 
makes these assertions on scientific grounds and as 
inductions from phenomena, and therefore claims 
for itself the possession of knowledge that is such 
in reality. 

It is the more careful to make these assertions 
that involve an infinite and eternal Will and a hu- 
man consciousness of God in free and eternal rela- 
tions to God, because it has witnessed the experi- 
ment of those who have attempted to preserve faith 
without a theosophy. " Step by step, the theolog- 
ical is supplanted by the scientific, the divine by the 
human view," — a process that finally brings " eter- 
nal things " within a finite system, or retains them 
as mere sentiments that will surely fade away, and 
so leave man at the mercy of a system of necessity 
under which all nobility and freedom will die out, 
or linger but as contradictory instincts. 

The New Theology accepts the phrase " a religion 
of humanity," but it holds that it is more than an 
adjustment of the facts of humanity, and more than 
a reduction of the forces of humanity to harmony. 
It accepts the theory of physical evolution as the 
probable method of physical creation, and as hav- 
ing an analogy in morals ; but it accepts it under 
the fact of a personal God who is revealing him- 
self, and of human freedom, — facts not to be ascer- 



28 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

tained within the limits of a material philosophy. 
It holds that the main relations of humanity are to 
God, and that these relations constitute a theology, 
a science of God ; for in Him we live, and move, 
and have our being. 

5. The New Theology offers a contrast to the 
Old in claiming for itself a wider study of man. 

It chooses for its field the actual life of men in 
the world in all their varying conditions, rather 
than as massed in a few ideal conditions. It finds 
its methods in the every-day processes of humanity, 
rather than in a formal logic. It deals with human 
life as do the poets and dramatists : it views human- 
ity by a direct light, looks straight at it, and into 
it, and across its whole breadth. A recognition of 
human nature and life, — this is a first principle 
with the New Theology. To illustrate : take a ser- 
mon of Robertson's, that on " The Principle of the 
Spiritual Harvest ; " see how every sentence rests 
squarely on human life, touching it at every point, 
the sermon and human experience meeting as if 
cast in a mould. Compare with this some of the 
recent utterances on everlasting punishment, — ■ 
able, and wrought out with great exactitude of 
thought, yet touching human life at not a single 
point; eliciting no response from consciousness or 
experience, from moral sense or common sense ; 
deftly constructed things, built outside of the world, 
and as if shaped by another order and for other 
beings than those we know ; resting on nothing but 
a formal logic, built out of definitions that antici' 
pate the conclusions, through which they antago- 
\iize every natural operation of the human mind. 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 29 

The Old Theology took for itself small foothold 
on humanity. Theology is, indeed, the science of 
God, but it is not that alone ; it is also the science 
of the relations between God and man, which, 
thougrh not the main, is as real a factor as God. 
The Old Theology stands on a structure of logic out- 
side of humanity ; it selects a fact like the divine 
sovereignty or sin, and inflates it till it fills the 
whole space about man, seeing in him only the sub- 
ject of a government against which he is a sinner ; 
it has nothing to say of him as he plays with his 
babe, or freely marches in battle to sure death for 
his country, o^ transacts, in honest ways, the honest 
business of the worW It lifts him out of his man- 
ifold and real relations, out of the wide and rich 
complexity of actual life, and carries him over into 
a mechanically constructed and ideal world, — a 
world made up of five propositions, like Calvinism 
or some other such system, — and views him only in 
the light of that world ; requires him to think and 
feel and act only in the light of that world ; teaches 
him that there is no other world for him to consider, 
and that his life and destiny are bounded by it, 
that there is no truth, no reality, no duty, no proper 
field for the play of his powers, no operation of the 
Spirit of God, no revelation of God, outside of this 
sharply-defined theological world. 

We have but to name the matter in this way to 
understand the subtle isolation that invests the 
clergy of this theology, men apart from the world, 
out of practical sympathy with it, having no place 
for it in their theory, thinking on different lines, 



30 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

and making small use of its wisdom or its material. 
It explains the subtle antagonism that runs through 
all literature. There is no poet, nor novelist, nor 
dramatist, no profound student of human nature, 
no mind with the gift of genius and insight and 
broad, free sympathy with humanity, no great in- 
terpreter of human life, but in one way or another 
indicates his dissent from this theology. Nowhere 
has it had greater sway than in Scotland. It is 
not denied that it develops certain sides of charac- 
ter into almost ideal perfection ; but why is it that 
nearly every great mind in Scotland, for more than 
a hundred years, has rejected its theology wholly 
or in part? Hume, Burns, Scott, Carlyle, Irving, 
Erskine, Campbell, McLeod, McDonald, — the 
defection of such minds from a faith so thoroughly 
inwrought into the texture of the national mind is 
a problem not to be explained by the vagaries of 
genius. It is to be explained rather by the fact 
that these great minds either felt or saw — some 
one and some the other — that the bounds of the 
theology were not commensurate with the bounds 
of human life. Hume was repelled into infidelity ; 
Burns satirized it, Scott turned his back on it. Car" 
lyle kept silence, McDonald protests against it, 
Erskine and Campbell and McLeod sought to 
modify it. The present restlessness in the world 
of theological thought is due largely to the fact thai, 
the teachings of literature have prevailed over tho 
teachings of the systems of theology. One cover/j 
the breadth of human life, the others travel a dub 
round in a small world of their own creation ; they 
no longer interest men. 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 31 

The protest is hardly stronger in literature than 
in the pulpit, where it shows itself in two forms : 
first, in an unthinking sensationalism, that throws 
all theology aside and preaches from the news- 
paper, retaining only a few theological catch-words 
for a seeming foothold, while it discourses of duty 
and conduct with more or less wisdom, as happens, 
but without a philosophy or any other basis for 
meeting the questions that invariably rise in the 
mind when summoned to think on eternal truths ; 
again, it shows itself in quiet and persistent efforts 
to modify and enlarge the definitions of the Faith, 
to widen the field from which truth is drawn, to 
broaden the domain of theology till it shall em- 
brace the breadth of human nature and the knowl- 
edge of the world, — recognizing the fact that God 
is revealing himself in the whole life of the world, 
in the processes of history, in the course of nations, 
in all the ordained relations of life, in the play of 
every man's mind. It thus multiplies the relations 
in which man stands to God ; it brings God and 
man face to face, the full nature of One covering 
the whole nature and life of the other. It is the 
characteristic fault of the Old Theology that it 
touches human life as a sphere touches a plane, 
— at one point only ; as in the doctrine of divine 
sovereignty, the whole being of God resting on 
man in that one truth. The New Theology would 
present them rather as plane resting on plane, — 
the whole of God in contact with the whole of man. 
It thus allies itself not only with the Scriptures, 
and with philosophy and science and human con- 



32 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

sciousness, but it awakens a sense of reality^ the 
securing of which lies at the basis of the Incarna- 
tion, — the divine hfe made a human life, the Son 
of man eating and drinking, a living way, that is, 
a way lived out in very fact in all the processes of 
human life, and so leading to eternal life. 

The pulpit of the New Theology, in its efforts to 
broaden its field, encounters the criticism that it 
secularizes itself. It may be its temptation and its 
danger, but only because it is not true to itself. It 
was the criticism brought against the Son of man, 
but the fact that He was the Son of man was its 
refutation. The New Theology does indeed regard 
with question the line often drawn between the sa- 
cred and the secular, — a line not to be found in 
Jewish or Christian Scriptures, nor in man's nature, 
a line that, by its distinction, ignores the very 
process by which the kingdoms of this world are 
becoming the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
It is one thing for the pulpit to go over into the un- 
redeemed world and use its spirit and methods and 
morality, to fail to distinguish between good and 
evil ; it is quite another thing to recognize in the 
composition and on-going of human society a divine 
revelation and process. Hence, it draws its theol- 
ogy from the Bible, indeed, but because it finds 
in the Bible the whole body of truth pertaining to 
humanity. And if there is any truth, any fact of 
science, any law of society, outside of the Bible, it 
" thinks on these things." 

This full and direct look at humanity induces 
what may be called the ethical habit of thought 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 3B 

The New Theology seeks to recover spiritual pro- 
cesses from a magical to a moral conception. It 
insists that these processes and facts are governed 
and shaped by the eternal laws of morality. It 
would have a moral God, a divine government truly 
moral, a moral atonement, and not one involving 
essential injustice, nor clouded with mysteries that 
put it outside of human use ; an atonement resting 
on God's heart, and calling into play the known 
laws and sentiments of human nature, and not one 
constructed out of a mechanical legality ; an atone- 
ment that saves men by a traceable process, and not 
one that is contrived to explain problems that may 
safely be left with God ; an atonement that secures 
oneness with the Christ, and not one framed to 
buttress some scheme of divine government con- 
structed out of human elements. It regards faith 
as a moral act, a direct acceptance and laying hold 
of God in trusting obedience, a simple and rational 
process ; and it opposes the view which regards it 
as simply a belief that an atonement has been made, 
a holy life being merely its proper adjunct. It 
would make faith an actual entering into and fel- 
lowship with the life of the Christ, and the indi- 
vidual's justification by faith the actual realization 
and consequent of this oneness. It does not differ 
essentially from the Old Theology in its treatment 
of regeneration, but it broadens the ground of it, 
finding its necessity not only in sin, but in the un- 
developed nature of man, or in the flesh. It is dis- 
posed also to regard it as a process, involving known 

laws and analogies, and to divest it of that air of 
a 



34 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

magical mystery in which it has been held ; a plain 
and simple matter, by which one gets out of the 
lower world into the higher by the Spirit of God. 

It is said of this Theology that, leaning so heavily 
on human life in all its complexity and contradic- 
tion, it necessarily lacks logical precision and coher- 
ence, and that its parts are not mutually self-sup- 
porting. It accepts the criticism, and confesses that 
it does not first and mainly aim at these features ; 
it does not strive to compass itself with definitions, 
nor to bring the whole truth of the Faith within the 
bounds of a system. It does not, for example, 
make it a prime object to shape one doctrine in or- 
der that it may fit in with another, or so shape all 
that they shall present a harmonious structure. It 
is not its first object to build a system, and it does 
not proceed in that fashion because it does not re- 
gard it as a living way, that is, a real way. To 
illustrate : it does not make future retribution an 
inference from some governmental scheme, or the 
complement of a doctrine of decrees and election. 
It is thus aside from the ordinary thought of men ; 
nor can they ever be brought to believe that their 
destiny is contained in the conclusion of a formal 
logic. Whatever the destiny of men may be, the 
New Theology will not assert it in either direc- 
tion in order to perfect a system. Indeed, it does 
not greatly care for systems as they have been hith- 
erto constructed. It seeks rather to observe the 
logic of life, the premises and sequences, the syllo- 
gisms and conclusions, that are involved in daily 
existence, in the struggles and conflicts and contra^ 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 35 

dictions of this struggling and contradictory world. 
It takes for its own that logic which is found in 
Macbeth, and Hamlet, and the Scarlet Letter, in 
the Prometheus and Job, in the parables of the 
Sheep and the Goats, and the Prodigal Son, and 
the Lost Sheep, — a logic not easily wrought into a 
system, but as systematic as human life. It aims 
simply at a larger logic, the logic wrought into the 
order of the world as it is daily evolved under the 
inspiration of Eternal Wisdom and Love. 

6. The New Theology recognizes the necessity 
of a restatement of belief in Eschatology, or the 
doctrine of Last Things. 

It is not alone in this respect ; it is the position 
of nearly every school and organ of theological 
thought. The New Version compels it, the thought 
of the age demands it. But while there are enough 
who urge the necessity, whenever a champion ap- 
pears in the lists he receives but a cold welcome 
from those who summoned him. The New The- 
ology recognizes the necessity, but its work is not 
summed up in meeting this need. In the popular 
conception it is identified with mere criticism of 
existing views of everlasting punishment. No mis- 
take could be greater ; still, seeing the necessity in 
common with others, it does not withhold itself from 
the subject, and if its essays, though largely nega- 
tive and tentative, are met by contradiction and 
ecclesiastical censure, it does not stay its hand nor 
heed the clamor. " Truth hath a quiet breast." 

First, and broadly, the New Theology does not 
propound any new doctrine relative to future eter< 



36 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

nal salvation or eternal punishment. It is popu- 
larly supposed to concern itself chiefly with the fu- 
ture condition of men, but it rather draws away 
from such a field. It is less assertive here than in 
any other region of theological thought. It is, how- 
ever, critical of the Old Theology, deeming it to be 
wise above what is written and out of line with the 
logic of the Faith ; but it does not follow it into the 
future existence, with denials that imply a state- 
ment of the contrary, nor with positive assertions 
of its own. And the reason is that it transfers, to 
a large extent, the scene of the action of the truths 
pertaining to the subject from the future world con- 
ceived as a world of time and space to a world 
above time and not set in dimensions of space. In 
briefer phrase, it does not regard the future world 
as identical with the eternal world. Hence, its 
constructions on the subject turn largely on the 
word " eternal," which it does not regard wholly as 
a time-word, but as a word of moral and spiritual 
significance ; it has little to do with time, but rather 
has to do with things that are above time ; there is 
no more and no other relation between time and 
eternity in the future w^orld than there is in the 
present world. This conception of the word does 
not necessarily imply that eternal punishment will 
not be everlasting ; only, if that belief is entertained, 
it does not rest on this word, but is to be based on 
other grounds. And the battle waged over it is 
due simply to the mistaken anxiety of one side lest 
it shall be robbed of a text. But this rendering of 
the word does not antagonize the doctrine it has 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 37 

been held to teach ; it simply separates it from the 
doctrine. 

The New Theology emphasizes this use of " eter* 
nal " as a word of moral and spiritual import, be- 
cause it puts in their right place and relation the 
action of all the great processes of the Faith. The 
Faith is not a finite thing, but an infinite ; its truths 
are not conditional, but absolute ; the play of its laws 
is not within time, but above time ; its processes are 
not hedged about by temporal limits, — in time it 
may be, but not bounded by it ; its facts have an 
eternal significance, which is other than that meas- 
ured by "the cycles of the sun." Thus the Christ 
is the eternally begotten Son of God, and He is the 
Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of 
the world. This conception carries the interpreta- 
tion of the Faith into the region of God, and allies 
it in its processes to his existence and his thought, 
which are above time. It proceeds on the specific 
belief that the Christ spoke and acted as in the 
eternal world. He would not otherwise have been 
a manifestation of God, nor would He have spoken 
eternal truth. It holds this logic with stern co- 
gency, for it sees that only thus the historic life of 
the Christ becomes an ever-present and esrer-endur- 
ing reality ; only thus can it regard the Faith as 
free from the chance and mischance of time, as 
larger than the confines of Judea, as broader than 
the stretch of centuries, as independent of the inci- 
dents and accidents of a changing world. Only thus 
can a correlation be established between the life 
and words of the Christ and the action of the Spirit. 



38 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

They do not mean the same, the One is not a carry- 
ing out of the Other, the One does not take the 
things of the Other and show them unto us, ex- 
cept as there is accorded to One the same absolute 
and eternal method that confessedly belongs to the 
Other. 

But the New Theology does not plant its entire 
conception of the subject upon one word. It seeks 
rather to enlighten itself by the general light of the 
entire revelation of God ; and thus it finds itself 
driven to such conclusions as these : namely, that 
every human being will have the fullest opportu- 
nity for attaining to the end of his creation as a 
child of God ; that every human being will receive 
from the Spirit of God all the influence impelling 
to salvation that his nature can endure and retain 
its moral integrity ; that no human being will be 
given over to perish while there is a possibility of 
his salvation. These are the very truisms of the 
faith, its trend, its drift, its logic, its spirit, and its 
letter, when the letter is interpreted under the spir- 
it; and they are equally the demand of the human 
reason. It might also be added as a truism that if 
the Gospel is intended for the world it is a Gospel 
for the world in very fact ; if there is " a true light 
which lighteth every man coming into the world," it 
will surely lighten every man. If, in its present ac- 
tion, the faith is conditioned by time and proceeds 
under a law of development, we need not conclude 
that its application to the world of mankind is lim- 
ited to time, or is bounded by periods or stages of 
development; this may involve essential injustice 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 39 

and other equally improbable elements. And so we 
are told that the Old Testament worthies are lifted 
by their faith out of their age and stage of devel- 
opment, and, by waiting, are " made perfect " with 
those of a later age, and under " some better thing '* 
that God had provided ; that is, the final condition 
of character for these ancient believers was not 
gained in their own age. But in what sphere did 
they await a perfection not to be gained except in 
connection with future generations ? The specific 
truth involves the general one, namely, that char- 
acter is not necessarily determined in any given 
stage of development. There is reason in this : 
man is an eternal being, and the great processes 
that affect his destiny take eternity for their field. 
It is thus that the seeming injustice and inequality 
that are incidental to his life under time are met 
by a transfer to the eternal world. The first fact 
pertaining to man is that he is eternal by virtue of 
the image in which he is created ; the second fact 
is that he is temporal : his destiny takes its rise in 
one and is greatly affected by it, but its completion 
and adjustment must be through the other. Only 
thus is he properly coordinated ; only thus can he 
be justly treated. 

If it be said that these truisms conflict with cer- 
tain texts, we waive yet do not grant the point, 
and answer that it is on the basis of these truisms 
there is such a consensus between Reason and 
Revelation that we accept it and hail it as a Gos- 
pel. If it be said that this makes Reason the judge 
of Revelation, we dissent, and yet assert that Rev- 



40 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

elation is not loaded with characteristics that shut 
it off from appeals to reasonable belief. It is not 
denied by any that the Gospel, in its inmost spirit 
and in its largest expression and purpose, means 
salvation. As such, it invests and presides over 
all other truths that may be connected with it. 
The key-note of the Old Testament is deliverance, 
and the Christ is the Lamb of God which taketh 
away the sin of the world. It is not in accord with 
nature in the limited field in which we observe 
and feel it. The Gospel is not within the category 
of sensible nature ; if it were we would not need 
it. Nor is it in accord with a legal system ; it is 
the antagonist of such a system. We may find in 
nature, and in human law and custom, analogies to 
processes in the Gospel, but we do not find in 
them the measure and total method and scope of 
the Gospel. 

The immediate form under which the subject is 
now engaging attention is that of " probation," — 
with the question whether there is one or more. 
An immense advance has been made in rational 
thought and scriptural interpretation in regard to 
it ; concessions are made on every side which, if not 
new, are unfamiliar. Still, the feeling cannot be 
avoided that the process of clearing is attended by 
a certain hardness of treatment not properly be- 
longing to it, and under terms that are foreign to 
its meaning, and with limitations that are not justi- 
fied by generous thought. It is largely associated 
with the phrase "a chance," — a poor word in it- 
self, an unscientific, a chaotic word. To interpret 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 41 

probation as the equivalent of " a chance," and only- 
insisting that it shall be fair, puts human life in a 
false relation to God, who has revealed himself as 
the Father of men. Probation may be involved in 
the idea of a family, but it is not the spirit or end 
of it ; it is simply incidental. The father, indeed, 
educates his children for future use and responsibil- 
ity ; but only in some indirect sense are they under 
probation ; they are not reared in an atmosphere 
of "chance," even though fair, or of an overhang- 
ing doom to be averted, but are children in the 
father's house, reared in hope and love and free- 
dom. We are not here in the world to be tested, 
but to be trained under God's lessons. Tested we 
are, but what father puts his household under a 
test? The question of probation comes to the 
front only when the proper elements of household 
life have been eclipsed. And what, then, is proba- 
tion ? A "chance," and one at that? Not in such 
terms is the history of a lost child of God's family 
described, but as a sheep that the shepherd seeks 
till he finds. This is paternal, this is God-like, and 
it is far removed in spirit from the conception in- 
volved in such a phrase as " chance," whether fair 
or not, whether one or many. That man is under 
probation is, indeed, true ; it is involved in the pos- 
session of a moral nature, and it is to be regarded 
as such rather than as a condition springing out 
of sin. Man is under probation, not because he is 
a sinner, but because he is a moral being, under- 
going a formative process. It should, therefore, 
not be treated in a harsh, doom-like way, but as a 



42 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

gracious feature of a gracious system. No father 
says to his children, " You have a chance ; it shall 
be fair; I will not be hard with you ; it will last just 
so long ; if you do not meet the test you may go 
your own way." It is, indeed, possible that in a 
desperate exigency of family-life a father might be 
forced to say this, but it is not in such guise that a 
wise and tender parent presents himself to his chil- 
dren. As little is it the aspect of the Heavenly 
Father before men. Probation is a fact, but it is 
not a fact to be treated as though it were already a 
semi-doom. 

Whether there be one probation or more, there 
is an immense gain to theological thought in getting 
the subject out of physical and temporal bounds 
into the region of morals. But is it not plain 
that when this is done the question whether there 
is one or more vanishes ? Probation is a continu- 
ous state or process till it ends by its own nature. 
It is one or many, as we choose to regard it, just as 
education may be regarded as a single or sub-di- 
vided process. All discussion of this sort is a mere 
logomachy. Probation may be divided into as 
many days, or hours, or distinct moral experiences 
as one undergoes. It is simpler and more scientific 
to say that man has but one probation, but, by its 
nature, it cannot have any bounds of time, whether 
of earthly life or world-age. It may, indeed, syn- 
chronize with .the world-age, but only because that 
goal of time is postponed till the problem of exist- 
ence has been solved by every human being. But 
probation will not be determined by the world-age, 



THE NEW THEOLOGY. 43 

hvt by its own laws. It ends when character is 
fixed, — if indeed we have any right to use a word 
so out of keeping with moral freedom, — and it is 
not possible to attach any other bound or limit to 
it. And character is fixed in eyil when all the pos- 
sibilities of the universe are exhausted that would 
alter the character. The shepherd in the parable 
seeks the lost sheep till he finds it ; shall we add 
to the parable, and say, " or till he cannot find it " ? 
If we do so, it is in view of the fact that the will of 
man, made in the image of God, is a mystery deep 
as the mystery of God himself. 

Such are some of the features of this fresh move- 
ment in the realm of theology, for it can scarcely be 
called more than a movement, an advance to meet 
the unfolding revelation of God. It is not an or- 
ganization, it is little aggressive, it does not herald 
itself with any Lo here or Lo there, it does not 
crowd itself upon the thought of the age, it is not 
keyed to such methods. It has no word of con- 
tempt for those who linger in ways it has ceased 
to walk in ; it has no sympathy with those who have 
forsaken the one way. It does not destroy foun- 
dations, nor sap faith, nor weaken motives ; it does 
not reduce the proportions of evil nor dim the glory 
of righteousness ; it does not chill the enthusiasm 
of faith, nor hold it back from its mightiest effort 
of sacrifice. It seeks no conquest represented in 
outward form, but is content to add its thought to 
the growing thought of the world, and, if it speaks, 
content to speak to those who have ears to hear. It 
makes no haste, it seeks no revolution, but simply 



44 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

holds itself open and receptive under the breath- 
ing of the Spirit that has come, and is ever coming, 
into the world ; passive, yet quick to respond to the 
heavenly visions that do not cease to break upon 
the darkened eyes of humanity. 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW" TRUTH. 



*' Never forget to tell the young people frankly that they are to expect 
more light and larger developments of the truth which you give them. 
Oh, the souls which have been made skeptical by the mere clamoring of 
new truth to add itself to that which they have been taught to think fin- 
ished and final! " — Rev. Phillips Brooks, Yale Lectures. 

"Infidelitj' is the ultimate result of checking the desire for expanded 
knowledge." — Edwards A. Park, D. D. 

" In the Bible there is more ihsii finds me than I have experienced in 
all other books put together; the words of the Bible find me at greater 
depths of my being; and whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible 
evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit." — Coleridge. 

"The soul once brought into inner and immediate contact with a 
divine power and life is never left to itself." — J. Lewis Diman, D. D., 
Sermon No. VI. 



\ 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 



" And Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that 
God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation, he that feareth him 
and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him." — The Acts x. 34, 
85. 

If we were to take this book of the Acts, and 
put it off at a little distance, so as to get its outline 
as a whole, and its trend, we should find that its 
main purpose is to unfold the broadening spirit and 
form of the church of God. 

It is a history of transition. On its first page 
the Christ ascends, and is no more contained in 
Judea. As the heavens, into which He rises, over- 
arch the whole world, so his gospel begins to spread 
its wings for its world-wide flight. Soon the Spirit 
— universal as the " casing air " — breathes upon 
the Apostles, and they begin to act under an in- 
spiration as free and wide as the wind that typi- 
fies it. On every page some barrier gives way ; 
with every line the horizon broadens ; one province 
after another is brought within the circle of the ex- 
panding faith, till at last Corinth and Athens and 
Rome are found playing their parts in this divine, 
world-wide drama. There is in this book of the 
Acts, as in Homer, and in all great histories, a 
wonderful sense of motion. One feels as if sailing 



48 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

in ja. great ship, under a bounding breeze, out of a 
narrow harbor into the wide sea ; every moment 
the shores withdraw, and the waters broaden, and 
the winds blow freer, till at last we get room to 
turn our prow whichever way we will. So in read- 
ing this history, it is no longer Judea, but the world ; 
no longer Jerusalem, but Rome and Spain also ; no 
more one chosen people, but all nations. Every- 
where, the Spirit is seeking worshipers ; the bud of 
divine promise has opened, and its perfume fills the 
world. 

With this change of scene there is corresponding 
change of personal attitude ; conversions not only 
in character, but in opinion ; it is a record not only 
of repenting and turning, but of broadening. For 
conversion does not necessarily enlarge a man ; it 
may simply turn him in another direction. It is 
possible to come out of evil into good, and yet re- 
main under intellectual conceptions that dwarf and 
restrain one. There is a broad world-wisdom that 
often runs along with a worldly life, that may be 
lost if the better life is held under narrow concep- 
tions, so that while the change may be a gain mor- 
ally it is a loss intellectually ; a process that has 
had illustration from the first until now, — in the 
proselytes whom St. Paul found it so hard to teach 
the distinction between the letter and the spirit, 
and in those of to-day who fail to distinguish be- 
tween conduct and character, between dogma and 
life, between the form and the substance of the 
Faith. Valuable as this book of the Acts is as a 
record of events, and as the nexus between the Dis« 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 49 

pensations, it is more valuable as introducing the 
life of the Spirit, and as showing how the faith 
of ages develops into liberty and the full life and 
thought of humanity. Here we have the full reve- 
lation of God evoking the full life of man. 

The incident before us is a happy illustration of 
this, — a minute and graphic history of the experi- 
ence of a Roman centurion ; a history priceless in 
its assurance of possible sainthood outside of the 
church, yet sho^ving its hard conditions : telling 
us how his devout aspirations carried him into the 
realm of vision, and drew him towards the faith 
that was more than his, and brought upon him an 
inspiration greater than any that came upon his 
blind yearnings after righteousness. Here also is 
a somewhat similar experience of Peter, matching 
and rounding that of Cornelius ; for God is teach- 
ing them both, drawing them off into the realm of 
vision, where they can be more effectually moulded 
to the divine uses. Sleep is not vacant of spirit- 
ual impression. God giveth his beloved, not sleep, 
but " in sleep." Into that mystery of physical re- 
pose that unbars the doors of the mind and with- 
draws the sentry of the will, the Spirit may come 
as unto its own, and say what it could not when 
the man is hedged about with wakeful and watchful 
powers. Shakespeare puts the deepest moral ex- 
periences of evil men into their dreams ; why not 
also into those of the good ? And so Peter intro- 
duces into the world a truth, often foreshadowed, 
and long in course of preparation, but not yet real- 
ized, that God is no respecter of persons, has no 



50 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

partialities, hears the prayers of all men, and ia 
pleased with their good deeds. This history, with 
these dovetailing incidents, is mainly a lesson in 
breadth and largeness of view. In closer phrase, it 
is a full expression of a gradually developing reve- 
lation of God. Cornelius is led out of his small 
world of simple devoutness, a world where the 
light and the darkness contended, and brought 
into the full light and harmonies of divine knowl- 
edge. And Peter is led out of his still clinging 
Judaism, with its imperfect conceptions of God, 
and distinctions of food exalted into religion, and 
is made to know that God, having created all men 
and all things, has no partialities ; and that because 
God has none, he is to have none, — his first effect- 
ual lesson in the requirement he had before heard, 
to be perfect, as the Father in heaven is perfect. 

Notice how God not only enlarges and broadens 
the views of these men, but does this in the direc- 
tion of himself. Peter is taught to think as God 
thinks, to look on men as God looks on them. 
He is enlarged upward, heightened as well as 
broadened in his knowledge. For there is an en- 
largement of view that is mere breadth without 
height; it keeps along the level of the earth, grows 
wise over matter and force, pierces to the centre in 
its search, weighs and measures all it finds, creeps 
but never soars, deeming the heights above to be 
empty. It is the direction knowledge is now tak- 
ing. The science and a great part of the litera- 
ture of the day and of what is called "culture," 
and the vast crowd that claims for some reason to 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 61 

*'know the world," the average man in society and 
business, all tend to a mental largeness that has 
extent without height. It is always difficult to 
maintain the equilibrium of truth. In preceding 
centuries the mind shot upward, but within narrow 
limits ; the gaze of thought was heavenward, as 
in the pictures of the saints. There was no look 
abroad, almost none upon the earth ; nature was 
simply to be used as found, not studied for further 
uses. Hence, there was great familiarity with the 
lore of religion, but dense ignorance of the laws of 
matter and of human society ; there were no mys- 
teries in heaven, but the earth did not even suggest 
a problem. Knowledge was high, but it was not 
broad. To-day the reverse is true : thought runs 
earthward and along the level of material things, 
but hesitates to ascend into the region of the spirit. 
It is interesting to note how this tendency per- 
vades classes that apparently do not influence one 
another ; thus the scientific class, and the lighter 
literary class ; neither reads the works of the other, 
nor are there any natural avenues of sympathy 
between them, yet in each we find the same close 
study of matter and man, and the same ignoring of 
God and the spiritual nature. Or, compare the 
man of universal culture with the average man of 
the world, who reads the newspaper, and keeps his 
eyes open on the street : the latter knows little of 
the former, never reads his books, nor even dilu- 
tions of them, yet we find them holding nearly the 
same opinions about God and the Faith, vague, 
misty, and indifferent ; but both are very obser- 



52 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

vant of what is about them. Such a fact seems to 
indicate that, instead of one class leading the way, 
or one set of minds dominating the rest, all are 
swept along by currents that flow out of some un- 
seen source. It seems to controvert the familiar 
saying that philosophy shapes the thought of the 
world. Never were the demonstrations of ethical 
and spiritual philosophy clearer or stronger than at 
present, but the age is materialistic. Never were 
the evils of materialism and the necessity of the 
spiritual so keenly felt, yet the tide of the former 
sweeps on without abatement. It seems to indi- 
cate the presence of other forces than those found 
in chance habits of thought, or in the brain of the 
strongest thinker. Aquinas and Hume, Bacon and 
Spencer, are not so much originators as exponents 
of currents of thought ; they represent a force which 
they themselves seem to be. There are ages of 
faith and ages of doubt ; it is not easy to doubt in 
one or to believe in the other. None of us are ex- 
empt from these prevailing tendencies, however 
much we may contend against them. Nor is it 
well that we should be wholly exempt ; it is doubt- 
less better that an age should have homogeneous- 
ness, else it will work at cross - purpose, and un- 
duly chafe and fret at itself. It is for some wise 
end that the gaze of men is for a time diverted 
from the heavens and turned to what is about 
them. It had become necessary that man should 
have a somewhat better knowledge of the world, 
and of his relations to it and to society. Hence 
his attention is directed thither by a divine and 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 53 

guiding inspiration, and no thinking man can be 
exempt from it. The only danger is lest the ten- 
dency become excessive, and we forget to look up- 
ward in our eagerness to see what is about us. It 
is the office of Christian thought to temper and 
restrain these monopolizing tendencies and secure 
a proper balance between them, to hold and en- 
force the twofold fact, that while our eyes are 
made to look into the heavens, our feet are planted 
in the soil of this world. Tennyson has no wiser 
lines than these : — 

** God fulfills himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

The thing we are apt to fail of to-day is not 
breadth and thoroughness of knowledge of what is 
about us, but of what is above and within us. 

I have fallen into this train of thought by re- 
flecting how God led Peter away from his small 
notions of religion, the doing or not doing this or 
that, and brought him into a higher and larger 
conception of Himself. 

As we read the story we wonder at the readi- 
ness and ease with which Peter gave up old habits 
of thought and entered into new ones. It is not 
easy for us to realize how great and violent a 
change he thus made in a moment. We have our 
convictions, strong enough they seem ; but we have 
little conception of the power of an Oriental's con- 
victions in respect to religion. Our strongest con- 
victions pertain to liberty and social order ; the 
Oriental's pertain to religion. He is easily en- 



54 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TEUTH. 

slaved, but not easily converted. The western mind 
will not brook tyranny, but it readily modifies its 
faith. Still, it is not easy for any one suddenly to 
lay down one's life-long convictions and take up 
new ones. Change of opinion is naturally slow 
and partial. But here is Peter, with the tradi- 
tional spirit of an Oriental, and the added inflexi- 
bility of the Jew, violating this apparently natural 
order, and passing at once under a new set of ideas. 
What is the explanation ? 

1. It seems to be in the nature of religious 
changes that they shall occur suddenly. There 
may be, there must be, long seasons of preparation 
for any moral change, but the transition is instan- 
taneous. It is the law of revelation. Its way is 
prepared by the slow processes of reason and educa- 
tion, but the revelation itself is quick, immediate, 
and not to be traced. Divine truth comes by 
flashes. The heavens open, and the Spirit descends 
as on the swift wings of a dove. Saul goes a-perse- 
cuting, and a light above the sun's dazzles him into 
instant submission. The Holy Spirit comes like a 
rushing wind upon the disciples, and in an hour 
they are new men. The jailer hears and believes 
in a night. Luther, while toiling up the holy stairs 
of the Lateran, holding to salvation by works, drops 
that scheme on the way, and lays hold of the higher 
one of salvation by faith. Ignatius Loyola in a 
dream has sight of the Mother of Christ, and 
awakes a soldier of Jesus. It is often so. We do 
not so much grow into the possession of new spir- 
itual truths as we awake to them. Their coming 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TEUTH. 55 

is not like the sunrise that slowly discloses the 
shapes and relations of things, but is like the light- 
ning that illuminates earth and sky in one quick 
flash, and so imprints them forever on the vision, 
like the coming of the Son of man, if indeed there 
be any other coming of Him than in fresh revela- 
tions of truth. Intensity makes up for time ; the 
subtler agency engraves a deeper impression. Char- 
acter is of slow and steady growth, but the revela- 
tions of truth that inspire character are sudden. 
A new outlook is gained and the man is changed, 
as, in climbing a mountain, it is some sharp turn in 
the path that reveals the new prospect which in- 
spires the onward march. Some can aflBrm that it 
was in a moment that the charm of poetry, the 
pleasurable consciousness of thought, the passion of 
love, the dignity of manhood, the obligation of ser- 
vice, the sense of the divine goodness, came upon 
them. These experiences are not so much growths 
as revelations, and because they come quick they 
move us ; we take up their motion ; we are inspired 
by their energy. To provide us with such experi- 
ences, the element of unexpectedness, of surprise 
and catastrophe, is put into life. An uneventful 
\ife is apt to be poor and barren, unless one has the 
rare gift, like Wordsworth, of turning every sun- 
rise and sunset, every storm, every changing phase 
of the old landscape, every fresh day of uneventful 
household life, into newness. It is the events of 
life — marriage, births, sickness, travel, new scenes 
and relations, the changes that drop from fortune's 
wheel, the thunderbolts out of clear skies, the sud- 



00 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

den lift of dark clouds — that bring new visions of 
truth. It was through a wonderful dream that 
Peter got that conception of God, new to himself 
and to the world, which so instantly mastered him. 

2. His ready change was also due to the fact that 
he got sight of larger and more spiritual truths 
than he had been holding. 

When truths, or what claim to be such, are of 
equal proportion, we balance them, or try one and 
then the other ; but as soon as one asserts itself as 
larger and finer w^e accept it instantly. Peter had 
been used to believing that God was a respecter of 
persons, but when he caught sight of the fact that 
God has no partialities, but accepts all men who 
work righteousness, his truth-loving nature rushed 
at once toward the greater truth. We have an ap- 
petence for new spiritual truth, and take to it read- 
ily. Hence every new notion or device that calls 
itself religious gets certain and quick following, but 
it only shows how insatiable is the demand for the 
new. This does not imply that we are to go about 
peering into the corners of the universe to find new 
truths, nor that we are to sit down and manufact- 
ure them. Truth already exists ; there is now all 
there ever will be. All we have to do is to take it ; 
to hold ourselves open to it ; to do God's will, and 
we shall know it ; to read it as Providence writes it 
before our eyes ; to listen to the still voice of the 
Spirit ; to keep a single eye, an open ear, and an 
obedient will. It is of the nature of spiritual truth 
that it reveals itself. The fundamental Christian 
idea is God seeking man, not man seeking God; 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 67 

the latter phrase represents a subordinate idea. We 
make but a poor figure when we attempt to think 
out a religion, or even to think our way through one. 
It is not a search after God, but a revelation of God. 
The grand movement and impulse are on the divine 
side. We ourselves can find nothing ; we can only- 
take what comes, watch the unveiling of divinity, 
careful only lest anything revealed escape our no- 
tice. The main thing for us to do is to get out of 
the caves of sin and self-conceit into the open air, 
where the sun shines and the Spirit breathes. An 
upturned face, an honest heart, space about us for 
the Spirit to get access, — these are the conditions 
of a continually fresh feast of eternal truth. 

There is also in such truth a self-attesting power 
that tends to secure instant reception. When one 
comes to me with a new machine, or a hew theory 
of government, or of the material universe, or of 
physical life, I hesitate ; but when I see a new dis- 
closure of the divine love, or a fresh exhibition of 
the value of humility and patience, or of some new 
adaptation of Christianity to human society, or of 
the superiority of spirit over matter, or indication 
that it is other than matter and inclusive of it, I at 
once believe. It is simply another candle brought 
into a lighted room. 

This self- attesting quality goes farther and be- 
comes commanding. Truth so seen allies itself with 
God and takes on divine authority. Peter says, 
'^God hath showed me that I should not call any 
man common or unclean." It is one of the subtle 
vorkings of all high truth that it vests itself, as by 



58 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

some instinct, with the divine attributes. No one 
would call a doctrine of expediency an eternal truth, 
even if he believed it ; a sense of language, running 
deeper than he knows, would forbid. But this 
same subtle sense of language almost requires us to 
put the epithet before love and duty and sacrifice. 
So vested, truth becomes authoritative and shuts 
out all hesitation ; with Peter, we rise and eat. 

I have had in mind thus far not any new laws of 
conduct or mysteries pertaining to God, or man, or 
destiny, but rather fresh and expanding vision of 
old truths, other sides of many-sided truth. Strictly 
speaking, there is no such thing as new truth ; truth 
is not a creatable thing, being simply the reality of 
existing things; but there is such a thing as fresh 
sight of the truth that now is and always has been 
and ever will be. To keep ourselves in the way of 
it is a clear and vital duty. We can hardly do any- 
thing worse for our moral growth than to hold it in 
such a way that it may not change its form, or pro- 
portion, or aspect, to us. When we bind it up in 
a form of words, or let it lie quiet in unthinking 
minds, or wear it as a sort of charm while we go 
about our work or pleasure, we have made a very 
poor and meagre thing of it. Not that one is to 
hold his faith as in a constant flux, or suffer him- 
self to be blown about by every new wind of doc- 
trine, but rather that he should attain the twofold 
attitude of alertness and passivity: passive to the 
Spirit that is ever breathing upon us, and alert to 
note and follow the unfolding revelation of God in 
the world. 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 59 

It is, I doubt not, a matter of conscious experi- 
ence with man}^, this fresh insight into truth, the 
germ or heart remaining the same, but taking on 
new forms and displaying new powers. It is such 
a relation to truth that keeps the mind delighted 
with it, exciting it by sweet surprises and inspiring 
it by new prospects. Thus it becomes living water, 
springing up into eternal life. 

It is a mistake to regard the truths of the Chris- 
tian faith, even those that are called leading and 
fundamental, as having a fixed form. Were they 
revelations from God, they might perhaps be so 
regarded ; but being revelations of God, they imply 
a process of unfolding. Truth is not something 
handed down from heaven, a moral parcel of known 
size and weight, but is a disclosure of God through 
the order of the world and of the Spirit. This is 
the key to the history of the Old Testament, the 
central element of the revelation by the Christ, the 
method of the Spirit. It is allied to the highest 
assertions of science, the other side of the arch that 
springs to meet that which rises out of the visible 
creation, the keystone of which is God, creator of 
the world and redeemer of humanity. 

Having spoken generally, I shall now speak more 
particularly of some of these truths, with a view 
to calling attention to this intermingling of perma- 
nent and changing qualities. The aim will be to 
inspire and aid belief rather than to challenge it, 
and to touch the themes in a broad and inclusive 
way, and by no means in the opposite way. 

Take first the truth known as the Trinity, 



60 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

though one could wish, with Calvin, " that the 
word itself were buried in oblivion." It has an- 
other look to-day from that it wore a hundred 
years ago. That view, if urged still, makes a very 
dry, formal, unnourishing thing of it. If, how- 
' ever, we suffer it to be transformed, under the ex- 
panding conception of God that has come in with 
the age, it grows vital and inspiring. It is the 
characteristic thought of God at present that He is 
immanent in all created things, — immanent yet per- 
sonal, the life of all lives, the power of all powers, 
the soul of the universe ; that He is most present 
where there is the most perfection : — 

"He is more present unto every creature He hath made 
Than anything unto itself can be." 

With such a conception of God, it becomes easy to 
see how there should be a Son of man who is also 
the Son of God, and a Spirit everywhere present 
and acting. Eevelation and thought so nearly meet 
that there is no chasm between, and no stress is 
laid on faith as it passes from one to the other. 
The formal trinity and the formal unity, the more 
barren conception of the. two, pass away, and God 
in Christ, filling the mould of humanity to the full, 
becomes a great, illuminating truth. We may or 
/may not pronounce the ancient phrases, but we 
need no longer hesitate to say, " Father, Son, and 
Holy Spirit;" meaning a paternal heart and will 
at the centre, a sonship that stands for humanity, 
a spiritual energy that is the life of men, and 
through which they come into freedom and right. 



^ 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 61 

eousness. This conception of God may be brought 
into the category of science, and even be required 
by it. It allies itself with its great postulates and 
demonstrations, and not only falls in with its analo- 
gies, but is needed for their application to human- 
ity and its history. 

So of the atonement : it contains a truth that 
mankind has never been willing to live without, 
and yet it has always been putting on new forms 
and yielding a richer life. It is the most elastic of 
the doctrines, capable of very low and very high 
expression. The conception of it that prevailed 
two hundred years ago shocks us of to-day. And 
more recent views of it as a matter of penal satis- 
faction and substitution, and as a mere contrivance 
for the expression of the divine feeling, no longer 
feed spiritual life ; and so we are struggling towards 
St. Paul's and the Christ's own statement of it as 
containing the law and method of life for every 
man : " He that loseth his life for my sake shall find 
it." We are getting to read this truth as meaning 
Christ formed in us, a law and way of life. And 
just as the older conceptions fade out, and the 
greater ones dawn, is there not only a deeper 
spiritual life, but a plainer coordination between 
the life they beget and the necessities of human 
nature. 

So also of regeneration : the foundations of this 
stringent doctrine are broadening and deepening 
with advancing thought. It has been held simply 
as a moral necessity, having its basis in sin ; but we 
are beginning to see that the Christ taught it also 



62 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

as a psychological necessity. We must be born 
again, not merely because we are wicked, not be- 
cause of a lapse, but because we are flesh, and need 
to be carried forward and lifted up into the realm 
of the spirit, — a constructive rather than a recon- 
structive process. Thus presented, it appears at 
'once as a universal necessity, and allies itself with 
the thought of the age. 

In the same way, the much and justly criticised 
doctrine of divine sovereignty and decrees is re- 
solving into the universality of law, the favorite 
conception of the age. Science, with its doctrine 
of an original, ultimate force, advances more than 
half-way towards this assaulted truth, while the 
larger conception to which it has helped us has 
taken its debatable features out of the hands of 
both contending schools. 

Or take the doctrine of sin, its inheritance and 
its relation to the personal will : the old-time pre- 
sentations of it were crude and harsh, but as we 
interpret it in the light of experience and history, 
we affirm it with increased emphasis. The keenest 
thought of the world is overtaking the thought of 
revelation. The doctrine of heredity as found in 
the pages of science, the doctrine of freedom as 
found in the pages of philosophy and the observar 
tion of life, yield nearly all we care to claim. 

So, too, of the miracles. I do not think the best 
thought is now stumbling over miracle, as it was a 
few years ago. Modern intelligence has grown so 
wide that it embraces both law and miracle in one 
harmony, and cares little to find any line of de« 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 63 

markation between tliein. Law fades out into mir- 
acle, and miracle runs up into law. No one now 
defines one as the violation of the other. An as- 
sertion of " the reign of law " does not disturb us 
80 long as we are conscious of the hourly miracles 
wrought by personality. The point of contact and 
union may not be seen, but we trace their converg- 
ing lines into the mystery that surrounds God's 
throne, believing that they meet in Him, who is 
both a will and a force to the universe, — a force 
in it, and a will over it. 

Take next retribution, the most controverted of 
doctrines ; the subject has merely fallen into the 
crucible of modern thought, and is emerging in 
new shape, n^t will never be denied so long as men 
have eyes to trace cause and effect, and it will never 
cease to have power so long as it is kept in that 
category, where only it belongs, and where it be- 
comes simply a matter of intelligence. Just now 
we are shifting our point of view, and stripping the 
subject of certain arbitrary and dogmatic coverings 
that had come upon it. We are putting it in the 
light of law and daily experience and Christ's word. 
We are finding out that it is not a matter of future 
time, but of all time ; or rather, not a matter of time 
at all, but an eternally acting principle. But it is 
undergoing no greater modification at present than 
it has undergone in the past. It has fallen into an 
atmosphere of hope, and so allied itself with the spirit 
and logic of revelation, and is thus becoming a genu- 
ine motive to conduct and ceasing to be an incubus 
of despair. The true preacher of retribution is not 



64 ON THE KECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

one who tones it down to mere remorse and separa- 
tion from God, — things that no evil-doer takes into 
account, — carefully separating from it all physical 
suffering and every other conception of pain calcu- 
lated to move men ; a retribution eliminated of all 
motive, and simply drawn out into infinity. In- 
stead, he sets the subject in the practical light of 
cause and effect in the external world, and in the 
more searching light of the same law working in 
the moral nature, where it binds hand and foot and 
casts into the outer darkness •, he points out the 
horrible consequences of crime and ignorance and 
low pleasure ; he unfolds the wretchedness that 
follows avarice and self-seeking and indolence and 
low-thoughtedness ; he makes it clear |^at the wages 
of sin is death ; in short, he emphasizes the two 
features of retribution that alone are effective, 
namel}?-, its nearness and its certainty, and lifts it 
into the timeless ranges of eternity, where alone 
its true emphasis is found. Like the kingdom of 
heaven, of which it is the dark shadow, it is not to 
be defined by any Lo here or Lo there, or shut 
within any time-phrases. Dogmatism on either side 
is no longer regarded with favor. So long as we 
cannot explain evil, we have no right to claim defi- 
nite knowledge of its consequences. So long as we 
cannot sound the depths of our own nature, we can- 
not predicate with certainty what that nature will 
do or become in any direction. The most reverent 
and profound thought of the day merely seeks to 
rescue the subject from a dogmatism that reflected 
immorality upon God, and made it a burden too 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 65 

heavy for the human spirit to endure ; provoking 
thus an instinctive rejection that paved the way to 
total unbelief. The new thought is in the interest 
of faith ; the old was fast ministering to doubt and 
denial and fierce contempt. Meanwhile the Christ's 
words grow luminous under the tenderer thought of 
humanity, and are seen to uphold the human heart 
and reason, while they also hold the conscience 
steadily to the contemplation of the immeasurable 
evil of sin. 

Take last the inspiration of the Bible. The 
theories of a generation ago are fast disappearing, 
verbal, dynamic, plenary, an inspiration covering 
all historical and scientific reference ; none of them 
are any longer insisted on. There is not now, 
and probably never will be, any generally accepted 
theory of inspiration, simply because it cannot be 
so compassed ; as the Christ said, " Thou canst 
not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." 
It is the breathing of God upon the soul ; who 
can put that into a theory ? So far as it shall have 
form or method of statement, it will be found in 
the larger truth of the Holy Spirit in all the scope 
of its action. We are getting to speak less of the 
inspired book^ and more of the inspired men who 
wrote it ; the quality or force of inspiration lying 
not so much in the form, or even matter, of the 
thing written, as in the writer himself, — his rela- 
tion to his age, the clearness of his thought, the 
pitch of his emotions, the purity of his spirit, the 
intensity of his purpose. We do not so much look 

into a book to find an infallible assertion as into the 
s 



6Q ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

inspired author, expecting to find trustworthy guid- 
ance and reflected inspiration ; remembering, how- 
ever, that, though inspired by the Spirit, he is but 
an inspired man, knit to his age and race and con- 
dition. The revelation, therefore, will have a two- 
fold character : it will be divine and human, the 
one conditioning the other ; not an imperfection, 
but rather the only kind of revelation that could 
serve our needs, for the line of revelation from God 
to man must run through the human heart. If it 
takes color and fbrm on the way, it is no less divine 
and trustworthy. 

But without a theory, we are reading the Bible 
with fuller faith than ever before. The more light 
we bring to it from nature and study and experi- 
ence, the clearer its truths stand out ; in such light 
it is becoming its own evidence, and no more needs 
an apologetic theory than a candle needs an argu- 
ment for illumination. We are not even careful to 
dispute about this or that seeming inaccuracy ; in- 
stead, we are confident that here is a book that 
keeps ahead of all thought, and constantly fur- 
nishes new light and fresh inspiration to mankind. 

These illustrations might be increased till they 
comprehended the entire range of Christian doc- 
trines. And when we had gone through them all, 
we should find, on review, one feature attaching to 
them severally and collectively, namely, that each 
one has a permanent essence and a shifting form ; 
the essence unquestioned, the form always under 
debate. To see and make this distinction is in it- 
self of utmost value; it is enough to save one to 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 67 

the Faith. But a thoughtful mind will go farther, 
and ask, How happens it that Christianity has this 
twofold feature of a permanent essence and a shift- 
ins: form ? The answer will take him into that 
world of thought recently opened, the main feature 
of which is the law of development or evolution. 
Into this world the Faith must go. The timid may 
linger on the threshold, but the time has come to 
enter in and set the Faith face to face with this 
principle that now colors and dominates all thought. 
Once in, the atmosphere is found friendly. It is 
not something to be quelled, but an ally to be 
pressed into service. What it does for every other 
department of thought it may do for the Faith, — 
open another door between the mystery of the ex- 
ternal order and the human reason. It not only 
thus finds itself in friendly relations with other 
realms of thought and knowledge, a state that the 
mind imperatively demands, being made to seek a 
harmony of all truth, but it is now able to under- 
stand and vindicate itself. When it contemplates 
itself as under development, it has the key of its in- 
terpretation ; it can account for its changes ; it can 
defend its history ; it can separate its substance 
from its forms ; it can go free and unburdened of 
past forms which were never of its essence ; it can 
once more take its place at the head of the sciences, 
and demand the loyalty of all, not because it recog- 
nizes their method, but because it alone offers a so- 
lution of the method, and is the solvent of all sci- 
ences. Recognizing this principle, we can read the 
Old Testament, and need no other explanation or 



68 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 

apology than it affords. The sayings of the Christ 
no longer wear a simply personal or half-explicable 
meaning, a somewhat wiser Oriental ethic, but be- 
come principles and revelations of eternal truth. 
The mustard-seed, the leaven, the seed cast into 
the ground, and the earth bringing forth fruit of 
herself, — these parables not only fall in with the 
principle, but attest Christ's absolute knowledge of 
it. It accords with that prime feature of revelation 
before referred to, as of and not from God ; a com- 
ing of God into the world by a process parallel with 
human development, and the source of it. 

It is not meant, however, that Christianity is to 
take its place under any school of scientists or phi- 
losophers, using their data and binding itself to their 
conclusions. Evolution is not to be identified with 
any school of thought or department of knowledge ; 
it is a principle pertaining to the order of the world. 
Christianity has its own data and phenomena, and 
they are not to be classed in any other category. 

It will be noticed that the reception of new truth 
has been spoken of in two ways that are apparently 
contradictory : one as quick and as by instant reve- 
lation ; the other gradual, a growth or develop- 
ment. They are not inconsistent, but represent the 
two methods of revelation : the twofold nature of 
truth as having a divine source and element and a 
human ground and element, and the twofold nature 
of man as spirit and mind. These methods play 
into each other. One prepares the way for the 
other. One is slow, and keeps pace with the grad- 
ual advance of society and a like development of 



ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 69 

the individual. The other is quick, is allied to the 
mysterious action of the Spirit, which knows not 
time nor space, and accords with the loftiest action 
of our nature. I gain knowledge slowly ; I gain 
the meaning of knowledge instantly ; it is a reve- 
lation of the Spirit that acts when knowledge has 
done its work. There were ages of civil and eth- 
ical training, of progress and lapse and recovery and 
growth, but the meaning of it flashed upon the con- 
sciousness of the world in a day. And so a man 
thinks, studies, undergoes life, gropes now in dark 
ways, or stands still, in despair of truth ; but find- 
ing this intolerable, presses on, and at last, in some 
better moment, some hour of spiritual yearning or 
tender sympathy or bitter need, the heavens open 
to his willing eyes, and in one swift glance he sees 
the meaning of all he has known, and feels the 
breath of the descending Spirit. Now he knows, 
indeed. Now there is meaning in the world and in 
life. The sense of vanity that invariably clouds 
existence and oppresses thought, when not so illu- 
mined, passes away. Now he begins to live to 
some purpose. Death is swallowed up in life. The 
material is merged in the spiritual. The eternal 
order takes the place of this shadowy and elusive 
order of nature that once held him, and he tastes 
the satisfactions of the Spirit. 



GOD OUE SHIELD. 



"Man is conscious of the being of God, and lives and acts in this 
consciousness, and the reality of the being of God so comes to him." — 
MuLFORD, Republic of God, page 1. 

" Thus God has will'd 

That man, when fully skill 'd, 

Still gropes in twilight dim ; 
Encompass'd all his hours 
By fearf ullest powers 

Inflexible to him : 
That so he may discern 

His feebleness ; 
And e'en for earth's success 

To Him in wisdom turn, 
Who holds for us the keys of either home, 
Earth and the world to come." 

John Henry Newman, The Elements. 

**Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown: 
With that wild wheel- we go not up or down." 

Tennyson's Geraint and Enid. 

"We exist here in a double connection: first, with the transitory on 
one side, and, secondly, with the untransitory on the other; and we 
fare as many other creatures do that are made for two distinct elements, 
com.ing into distress in one element the moment they lose connection 
with the other." — Dr. Bushnell, Moral Uses, page 383, English ed. 

" There is throughout nature something mocking, something that leads 
us on and on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith with us. All promise 
outruns the performance. We live in a system of approximations. Every 
end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round 
and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domes* 
ticated."' — Emerson. 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 



"After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a 
vision, saying: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." — 
Genesis xv. 1. 

There are two main things that man needs in 
this world : he needs protection and the fulfillment 
of his desires and labors, a negative and a positive, 
a shield and a reward, something to protect him 
while in the battle, something to reward him when 
it is over. 

This promise is silently keyed to the note of 
struggle as underlying life, the conception of life 
that the wise have always taken. It is the condi- 
tion of the highest virtue ; it is the aspect that 
every earnest life takes on. It is as a conflict that 
existence begins in Eden, it is a victory that crowns 
it in the new Jerusalem ; the first word in Scrip- 
ture is of trial, the last is of overcoming. Life is 
not mere continuance or development ; it is not a 
harmony, but a struggle. It continues, it develops, 
it may reach a harmony, but these are not now its 
main aspects. 

It is this element of struggle that separates us 
from other creations. A tree grows, a brute de- 
velops what was lodged within it ; but man chooses, 
and choice by its nature involves struggle. It is 



74 GOD OUR SHIELD. 

through choice and its conflicts that man makes his 
world, himself, and his destiny ; for in the last 
analysis character is choice ultimated. The ani- 
mals live on in their vast variety .and generations 
without changing the surface of the earth, or vary- 
ing the sequences wrought into their being; but 
man transforms the earth, and works out for himself 
diverse histories and destinies. One is perfectly 
coordinated to nature ; the other is but partially so, 
and is man-like just in the degree in which he gets 
out of the formal categories of nature into the free- 
dom of his own spiritual and eternal order ; great 
just in the degree in which he rises above instincts, 
and gets to living out of moral choices. 

This is a matter well worth thinking of while 
the tendency is so strong to identify man with 
nature, and make him wholly the creature of phys- 
ical environment ; a habit of thought which, if not 
checked at the proper point, leads to some doctrine 
of necessitjr by which the moral sense is paralyzed, 
and thence to atheism, a path straight, swift, and 
sloping to the hells of unbridled desire. For when 
you attempt to account for man as a product of na- 
ture, and to shut him up in natural processes, you 
shut out the heavens and the God who sits on their 
circle, and make him but another of the beasts 
" that tear each other in their slime." I do not 
deny that man is in nature, and that her processes 
are wrought into him, and even are features of his 
whole history, but only that he is summed up in 
nature. The strong tendencies of thought just now 
are towards such identification of nature and man, 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 75 

with complimentary phrase of him as her crown or 
flower, the product of her forces lifted to the high- 
est, the final outcome of her order working to its 
finest issue, and the like. This tendency is in the 
air and haunts all minds, an evil miasm exhaled 
from the low fens and primal depths of matter, 
poisoning faith and breeding diseases that slay all 
nobility and glory of life. How far it will go can- 
not be told, but it will go far enough to show that 
it leads to confusion and despair. But when these 
sure ends are reached, man will reexamine himself, 
and find out that he is divine as well as physical, 
and that he cannot, even in the light of his own 
phenomena, be classed with the perishing orders of 
the external world. Happy is he who now sees 
the intellectual fallacy in such a conception of man ! 
Happier still is he who has entered into the Christ- 
idea of sonship in God, and with swift and easy 
logic reasons that the child must share the life 
and destiny of the Father ! Meanwhile, however 
pressed by the accuracies of science, and while wait- 
ing for its highest conclusions, let us cherish the 
nobler conception. Anything that even seems to 
wear the look of descent in thought is to be re- 
garded with suspicion, or passed by. 

It is this nobler view of man, as choosing and 
struggling, that makes it needful he should have 
protection in the world. If he were only an ani- 
mal he might be left to nature, for nature is ade- 
quate to the needs of all within her category ; but 
transcending, and therefore lacking full adjustment 
to nature, he needs care and help beyond what she 



76 GOD OUR SHIELD. 

can render. He finds himself here set to do bat- 
tle, life based and turning on struggle ; but nature 
offers him no shield fit to protect him, nor can 
nature reward him when the struggle is over. She 
has no gifts that he much cares for, she can weave 
no crown that endures, and her hand is too short to 
reach his brow. 

There is a better philosophy back here in the 
beginnings of history, the beginnings also of true, 
full life. Abram is the first man who had a full 
religious equipment. He had open relations to 
God ; he had gained the secret of worship ; he 
had a clear sense of duty, and a governing princi- 
ple, namely, faith or trust in God. It starts out 
of and is based on this promise of God to be his 
Shield and Reward. His sense of God put his life 
before him in all its terrible reality ; it is not going 
to be an easy matter to live it. Mighty covenants 
are to be made ; how shall he have strength to keep 
them ? He is to become the head of a separate na- 
tion ; how can he endure the isolation necessary to 
the beginning? He is to undergo heavy trials and 
disappointments ; how shall he bear them ? He is 
promised a country for his own, but he is to wan- 
der a citizen of the desert all his days, and die in 
a land not yet possessed ; how can he still believe 
with a faith that mounts up to righteousness ? Only 
through this heralding promise : "I am thy shield, 
and thy exceeding great reward." When you are 
in trouble I will protect you. When you fail of 
earthly rewards I will be your reward. But 
Abram's life, in its essential features, was not ex- 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 77 

ceptional. I do not know that it was harder to live 
than yours or mine. I do not know that his duties 
were more imperative, his doubts more perplexing, 
his disappointments and checks severer than those 
encountered by us all to-day. He needed and we 
need two things to carry us through, protection 
and fulfillment of desires, shield and reward. 

Let us now look at the first of these two things 
with something more of detail. 

1. We need protection against the forces of nature. 

In certain aspects nature is kind to us and helps 
us ; she strives to repair any injury she may do to 
us ; she is often submissive and serves us with do- 
cility. But in other aspects she is cruel and un- 
sparing, and her general aspect is that of a power 
over us rather than under us. We play with the 
fringes of her garment ; we turn some little of her 
forces to our use, shut up a little of her steam and 
gather a little of her electricity and yoke them to 
our service ; we turn aside a rill of falling water 
here and there and hold up our sails of a hand's 
breadth to her wide winds, but how little have we 
trenched on the mighty powers that infold us ! 
How far off are we from any subjugation of nature, 
how feeble still are we before its greater forces. It 
may be the function of civilization to turn these 
forces to use and to get men into friendly relations 
with them, but when the farthest progress is made 
in this direction, the general character and aspect 
of nature will not have greatly changed. Water 
will still drown, gravitation will still dash in pieces, 
heat will still slay, gases will still poison. There 



78 GOD OUR SHIELD. 

will be no more pliancy in natural laws to favor the 
finite condition that man will never escape here. 
No degree of obedience that we may render to them 
will prevent oxygen from consuming tissue, or 
strengthen the walls of the jugular vein, or take 
away the wasting power from the years. Nature 
remains in her most comprehensive laws and largest 
processes, a power over man, alien in temper to his 
freedom, not correlated in its absolute methods uo 
his conditioned powers, making exactions that he 
never can meet or evade. A system that has f 3r 
its largest feature a doom and that leads to a doom, 
cannot be other than a terror to man until he is 
provided with some other conception than it affords. 
I confess that I should be filled with an unspeaka- 
ble dread if I were forced to feel that I was wholly 
shut ap in nature. We are constantly brought face to 
face with its overpowering and destroying forces and 
we find them relentless. We may outwit or outmaster 
them up to a certain point, but beyond that we are 
swept helpless along their fixed and fatal current. 

But how does God become a shield against them ? 
Only by the assurance that we belong to Himself 
rather than to nature. When that assurance is 
received, I put myself into his larger order ; I join 
the stronger power and link myself to its fortunes. 
I cannot of myself contend against this terrible or- 
der of nature as it drives me to wreck on stormy 
seas, or consumes my body with its relentless tooth, 
but I can say, " I do not belong to your order." I 
am speaking here in the line of philosophic thought 
as well as of religious trust, for faith must have 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 79 

some foothold on the rock of truth. The question 
pressing hardest to-day is, to which order do we be- 
long, to the material or to the spiritual ? Does the 
one or the other compass us ? Is mind a gradation 
of matter? Is spirit the essence of matter, or is it 
something other than matter, over it and inclusive 
of it? We talk of Waterloos and Gettysburgs; 
they were petty conflicts in comparison with this 
battle now going on in the realm of thought, one 
side claiming that the material world includes man, 
the other side claiming that he cannot be summed up 
in its category and is but partially adjusted to its 
methods, that its highest principle, which is unvary- 
ing law, is opposed to his highest principle, which 
is freedom, thus preventing full correlation between 
them and inducing relations that are painful and 
destructive to him. It makes a great difference 
practically, which side we take. If the material 
world includes me, then I have no shield against its 
relentless forces, its less than brute indiscrimina- 
tion, its sure finiteness or impersonal and shifting 
continuance. Then I am no more than one of its 
grains of dust and must at last meet the fate of a 
grain of dust. But if spirit has an existence of its 
own, if there is a spiritual order with God at its 
head and with freedom for its method, then I be- 
long to that order, there is my destiny, there is my 
daily life. My faith in that order and its Head is 
my shield when the forces of nature assault me and 
its finiteness threatens to destroy me. I say to it, 
'^ You may slay my body with your laws, and you 
will at last, but you will not slay me, nor can you 



80 GOD OUR SHIELD. 

greatly hurt me ; nay, you can only bless me in a 
sort of servile way ; I do not belong to you, I be- 
long to God." 1 

2. We need a shield against the inevitable evils of 
existence. 

Sooner or later there comes a time to every one 
of us when we are made to feel not only that we 
are weaker than nature, but that there is an ele- 
ment of real or apparent evil in our lot. It does 
not often come early. Happily the larger half of 
life is spent before we awake to the fact that a 
process of decay and loss is going on within us. 
For fifty or more years there is a triumphant sense 
of strength and adequacy. We ride on the crest 
of the waves of life, and have no sense that we 
can be engulfed in its waters. Out of this strong, 
divinely-wise ignorance come the great achieve- 
ments, for it is a certain simplicity in men that 
leads them to undertake great things. But by and 
by there comes over us a new sense of ourselves. 
We detect the working of a law of weakness and 
decay. Our bodies gradually lose their elasticity, 
our heritage of strength slowly wastes away, the 
step grows slower, the feet feel their way along 
the earth instead of touching it with firm rebound, 
the eyes lose their keenness, the skin shrivels, the 
frame shrinks together, the voice loses its soft and 

1 I hardly need to say that I do not intend to assert any doctrine of 
dualism, or to array God and nature as opposing forces. God is inclu< 
sive of nature, and the relations of nature to man are benevolent, but it 
is still true that because man is not throughout coordinated to nature, 
the relation involves pain from which there is no deliverance except by 
An alliance with God who is more and other than nature. 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 81 

cleat vibration, the recovery from illness is slow and 
partial. And thus there dawns on us a sense of 
mortality peculiarly real. The tables are turned 
with us. Heretofore life, the world, the body, — 
all have been for us ; now they are against us, they 
are failing us ; the shadow of our doom begins to 
creep upon us. 

How real this experience is every thoughtful 
person of years well knows. It has in it, I verily 
believe, more bitterness than death itself. It is the 
secret of the sadness of age. And there is every 
reason why this experience should be sad. It is 
necessarily so until we can meet it with some larger 
truth and fact. No philosophy can meet, no force 
of will can outmaster it, no mere habit of cheer can 
hold its own against it. It is a fact, and cannot be 
reasoned away, and as the stern law of decay holds 
on its course, the force of will and the smile of 
cheer die out by slow or rapid degrees. 

" Whatever poet, orator, or sage 
May say of it, old age is still old age." 

It is a horrible fact, and it cannot be anything less, 
as this cheerful poet is forced to say, — this fact of 
loss and decay. It may be unmanly not to endure 
it, but it is not unmanly to see and feel it as it is. 
But even manly endurance itself fails as the pro- 
cess goes on, and the powers of body and mind 
shrink towards nothingness. We are not now deal- 
ing with sentiment, but with the hardest of facts. 
The common appeal is to a spirit of cheer, to force 
of will, for courage to the last, to go down with the 
flag flying, and the like. This is indeed sentimentt 



62 GOD OUR SHIELD. 

but no philosopher, no physiologist, will use it ; they 
know that the will and courage are involved in this 
process. The mind stands -with one foot on' the 
body. However it may be with it as an entity, its 
working energies flow out in' the same wasting cur- 
rent as those of the body. As this stage of exist- 
ence draws on, the question is forced upon us, — 
Is there no shield against this evil ? Is there noth- 
ing left for us but brute-like endurance, or some, 
phantom-show of cheer and will, nothing but senti- 
ments that are bound up in the dissolving process, 
and that necessarily come to an end when most 
needed ? 

Along with this decadence of powers comes a 
greater evil, — an apprehension of finiteness. In 
our j^ears of wholeness and strength there is no 
such apprehension. Life carries with it a mighty 
affirmation of continuance, but when life weakens 
it begins to doubt itself. But the idea of coming 
to an end is intolerable ; it does not suit our nature 
or feelings ; it throws us into confusion ; we become 
a puzzle to ourselves ; we cannot get our life into 
any order or find for it any sufficient motive or end, 
and so it turns into a horrible jest, unless we can 
ground ourselves on some other conception. But 
the sense of finiteness presses on us with increasing 
force ; it seems to outmaster the infinite, and even 
to assert its mastery in the process at work within 
us. This process has come to wear a scientific cast, 
and seems to claim the endorsement of science. 
We are kept alive by the action of two laws, — the 
vital and the chemical. Physical life is the result 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 83 

of the struggle between the two, — the vital building 
up, the chemical tearing down, — constant waste, 
constant repair. Were the latter to cease, death 
would shortly follow. Silently, ceaselessly the two 
forces work in perpetual antagonism, — life weaving 
in its mysterious loom the cell-tissue that makes up 
the human fabric, — how we cannot tell, science 
cannot unravel the process. All we can say is, that 
it must be the hand of creative Life himself that 
holds the threads, and throws the shuttle. Over 
against it is the busy destroyer — oxygen — burn- 
ing up the life- woven tissue steadily, relentlessly. 
For years the vital force is stronger and weaves 
faster than its enemy can destroy. But at last, 
somewhere in mid-life, the forces are equal. Then 
the chemical gains on the vital, and pulls down 
faster than the other builds up. We die simply 
because chemical force triumphs over vital force, 
because the law of destruction is stronger than the 
law of life, because the finite outmasters what 
seemed infinite. Does it outmaster it or not ? 
That is the question. It is here that we need a 
shield to interpose against the horrible suggestions 
of this last battle of life. And it is just here that 
God offers himself as such a shield, — God himself 
in all the personality of his being, — the I Am, — 
Existence, The name itself is an argument ; exist- 
ence is in question, and here is Existence itself 
saying to a mortal man, " I am your shield." Must 
not the protection bear a relation to the Being who 
protects ? God is behind and in this battle that 
seems won by death. One side is plain enough. 



84 GOD OUR SHIELD. 

The chemist can tell us all about it, — how oxygen 
tears down, — but he can tell us nothing of how 
life builds up. The Sphinx, staring upon the Nu- 
bian sands, is not more dumb than he when he 
stands before life weaving its tissue. There is a 
power and a principle present that he cannot detect 
or measure, and never will ; the mystery of being 
is insolvable ; eternity will not give us the key. If 
he is logical he will not attempt to draw conclusions 
as to the destiny of man when there is an unknown 
element in the problem. If this unseen Power sees 
fit to weave the fleshly fabric in a finite way, we 
need not conclude that the life itself shares the fate 
of the apparent web. With an omnipotent Weaver 
weaving a fabric made up of finite threads, and also 
of incomprehensible threads, spun and drawn out of 
his own being, it is not necessary to believe that 
when the finite are dissolved, the others also are 
dissolved. Their entire relation is that of antagon- 
ism, — may they not be diverse in their destiny? 
They were originally brought together, — how we 
do not know, — may they not be separated, — how 
we cannot understand ; but one mystery is not 
greater than the other. One is a fact, the other 
may be and has its analogy to support it. We may 
rest in the conclusion that if God has had a hand in 
the making of us, his work will endure. Between 
ourselves longing for life, and this devouring sense 
of finiteness, stands God -— =■ a shield. '-' I made you,'' 
He says, " but you shall not perish because I put 
you into a perishing body. Because I made you 
you cannot perish. Because I am the ever-living 
God you shall live also." 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 85 

3. God is a shield against the calamities of life. 

It is rarely that one gets far on in life without 
seeing many times when it is too hard to be borne. 
Take ordinary, average life, I hardly see how men 
stand up under it. Take a life like that of so 
many around us, where only one pair of hands is 
all there is between the family and starvation, with 
the chances of sickness or no work. Ah ! " the sim- 
ple annals of the poor " are not cheerful reading. 
Or, take the every-day catastrophes, loss of prop- 
erty, little children, or wife, or husband, swept away 
by death ; take the life-long sorrows, the drunken 
son, the daughter gone to shame, the marriage that 
has turned into disgust, — it is not easy to walk 
steady through the years with such burdens on one. 
Consider, also, how hopes die out, how life with 
most settles into a dull ache of disappointment, 
what multitudes carry about secret sorrows, and 
how, for most of us, the life that was to be so free, 
and glad, and prosperous, has turned into a tread- 
mill of toil or dull routine of trifles. I confess I 
see little life that is of itself rewarding, little life 
that pays as it goes. There are few who can say 
with Walter Scott, " sat est vixisse,'^ it is enough 
to have lived. For vast multitudes life is unutter- 
ably sad and bitter, for many others it is dull and 
insipid, for others one long disappointment, for 
none is it its own reward. It will always wear this 
aspect to the sensitive and the thoughtful unless 
some other element or power is brought in. Man 
cannot well face life without some shield between. 
He may fight ever so bravely, but the spears of life 



86 GOD OUR SHIELD. 

will be too many and too sharp for him. And no 
shield will thoroughly defend him but God. The 
lowest, by its very condition, demands the highest; 
the weakest calls out for the strongest, — none but 
the strongest can succor the weakest ; the saddest 
can be comforted only by the most blessed; the 
finite can get deliverance from its binding and tor- 
turing condition only in the eternal one. When 
Hamlet caught sight of life, and saw what he had 
got to do and bear, he said, " I '11 go pray." You 
have but to name God before sorrow and it changes 
color ; name Him before burdens and they grow 
less ; name Him before the vanity of life and it dis- 
appears. The whole sphere and scene of life is 
changed, lifted into a realm of power and wisdom 
and gladness. With the incoming of God there is 
a sense of reversal, everything that is sad and poor 
and dark and wrong is turned about and gathers 
meaning and purpose. A prophetic sense enters 
into us, and these wandering, disorderly, fragmen- 
tary features and experiences of life, are built up 
into a city that hath foundations in which we re- 
pose by faith. 

4. God is a shield against ourselves. 

It is, in a certain sense, true of us all that we are 
our own worst enemies. One may have no fatal 
appetite or habit, and this still be true. There is 
a wide difference between a development of per- 
sonality, and that growth and condition known as 
self-consciousness. One is the highest achievement 
of life, the other is its curse and failure. The dif- 
ference springs from the motive or principle of con- 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 87 

duct, for in all things the seed determines the shape 
and character. If this seed is self-love, self-care, 
self-exaltation, it ends in the creation of a world in 
which self is the only citizen. It cuts the man off 
frona external inspirations and motives. Humanity 
ceases to move him. The world breathes upon him 
no inspiring motive. Human love loses its tender 
force and appeal. His own instincts and faculties 
cease to work well. There are no longer sweet in- 
fluences in the Pleiades. The spirit departs from 
all things, and nature, instead of a radiating source 
of influence and thought, becomes a show or vain 
form that passes dully before his eyes. Whatever 
he looks upon becomes a mirror that reflects him- 
self, and ceases to be the sign and medium of truth. 
It is the last and worst result of selfishness that it 
leaves one alone with self, out of all external rela- 
tions, sealed up within self-built enclosures. A 
very fair and seemly life may end in this way. If 
self be the central thought, it ends in nothing but 
self, and when this comes about we find that self 
is a poor companion. It matters not what form it 
takes, — intellectual conceit, personal vanity, pride 
of dress, self-pampering, ambition, avarice, or even 
that commonest of mental habits, the thoughts play- 
ing about self in fond and idle ways, — the tendency 
is to an exclusion of all but self, and so to a fixed 
state of self-consciousness. And this is misery, this 
is perdition, to be shut up with self, to walk up 
and down self and find out at last how small self 
is, to measure and weigh self and find out how 
light self is, to feed on self, to dwell, to sleep and 



88 GOD OUR SHIELD. 

wake and converse with self alone, there is nothing 
worse than this. 

If you would see this truth put into its highest 
expression, read Tennyson's " Palace of Art." The 
greater poets never mistake when they touch themes * 
like this. The aesthetic school of the day strives to 
use this poet for enforcing its small fancies and un- 
certain morality; but this poem, written long ago 
as if by prophetic inspiration, is the denial and 
refutation of its main current, and contains its final 
history ; at last — 

"No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world: 
One deep, deep silence all." 

He built its palace, more gorgeous than its weaker 
fancy can devise, but he left it empty on the simple 
ground of a lack of that morality which it passes 
by, or but lightly names. A weak and false repre- 
sentative of this earnest age is this school with its 
brooding parade of self at the front, reminding one 
of the curtain of a theatre whereon is painted a 
careless youth touching the strings of a lute for list- 
less girls amongst flowers and fountains, while be- 
hind it is Hamlet rehearsing his great question, 
" To be, or not to be," or Lear struggling with the 
tempest and his own heart. 

One of the main uses of God, so to speak, is to 
give us another consciousness than that of self, — a 
God-consciousness. It was this that Christ made 
the world's salvation, not breaking the Roman 
yoke, not instituting a new government or a new 
religion, not revealing any formal law or secret of 
material prosperity, or any theory of education or 
reform, but simply making plain a fact, assuring 



GOD OUR SHIELD. 89 

the world that God is, and that He is the Father, 
and breathing a consciousness of it into men, open- 
ing it up to the world's view, and writing it upon 
its heart as in letters of his own blood ; thus he 
brought in a God-consciousness in place of a world- 
consciousness and a self -consciousness, this only, 
but who shall measure its redeeming power ! And 
there is no more gracious, shield-like interposing of 
God than when He comes in between us and self as 
a delivering presence. It is the joy of friendship 
that we are conscious of our friend, and that he 
draws us away from ourselves. It is the joy of the 
home that each one is conscious of the other; home- 
life reaches its perfection when parents and chil- 
dren not only love, but pass on to the highest form 
of love, — a steady and all-informing consciousness 
of one another. It shadows forth the largest form 
of the truth, God dwelling, not amongst but in 
men, a shield against themselves. It is God Him- 
self who fills this relation. I, the ever-living God, 
am your shield ; not some truth about me, not some 
^' stream of tendency," not some blind or unknown 
force working towards righteousness, but I who 
^nade you in my image, and whom therefore you 
linow, I am your shield ! 

Thanks for this old and ever new promise flam- 
ing its glorious assurance in the front of history ! 
Ifc is the personal God who stands between us and 
tlie dread forces of nature, his ministers and ours 
and no more, between us and our finiteness, be- 
tween us and calamity, between us and self, with 
its vanit}', its meagreness, and the dread conclusion 
to which it points. 



! 



I 



GOD OUR EEWAED. 



** O Thou whose power o'er moving worlds presides. 
Whose voice created and whose wisdom guides, 
On darkling man in pure effulgence shine, 
And cheer the clouded mind with light divine. 



' Tis thine alone to calm the pious breast 

With silent confidence and holy rest; 

From Thee, great God, we spring, to Thee we tend, 

Path, Motive, Guide, Original and End." 

Boethius, translated by Dr Johnson. 

*' There entertain him all the saints above, 

In solemn troops and sweet societies, 

That sing, and singing in their glory move, 

And wipe the tears forever from his eyes." 

Lycidas. 

"With God, the human soul not merely interprets the secret of the 
universe ; it comprehends, and is at peace with itself. For God is the 
satisfaction of its thirst." — Canon Liddon, Elements of EeligioUf 
page 80. 



GOD OUR REWAED. 



We now take up man's other main need, the pos- 
itive one, namely, the fulfillment of desires and 
labors. 

It is the characteristic of man that he plans and 
remembers; he plans to gain an object, he remem- 
bers his plan and looks for its fulfillment. Life is 
based on this idea of a return or reward to be 
gained ; that is, it is not its own reward. It is not 
enough for man simply to live. The ox lies down 
in the shade and chews his cud in utter content. 
There is, doubtless, a vast joy, an immeasurable, 
blissful content in the animal creation that seems 
to mock the inseparable woe of humanity. Their 
almost perfect health, their harmonious adjustment 
to their surroundings, their entire oneness with 
their world and their kind, must yield a joy nearly 
perfect in its kind. A bird's song, a child's laugh- 
ter, are simply the expression of joy in bare exist- 
ence. But a man soon gets beyond the state when 
he can say, "It is enough to live, to eat and drink 
and sleep and dwell at peace with my kind." 
There are indeed moments when the cup of life 
overflows; days in June when heaven and earth 
draw so near together that the rapture of both fills 



94 GOD OUR REWARD. 

the heart, and one is forced to cry with the poet : 
" O God, I thank thee that I live." There are mo- 
ments also when love so overwhelms the other fac- 
ulties that we think not of yesterday or to-morrow, 
but only of our present perfect bliss, as when words 
of plighting troth have been uttered, or, in some 
tenderer moment, a father takes his prattling child 
on his knee, and in the unutterable outgoing of his 
love, catches a glimpse of how God loves, and why, 
loving so, He dwells in infinite repose. But such 
moments are transient, bits of eternity unduly real- 
ized, chance foretastes of what shall be when that 
which is perfect is come. The law of our condition 
soon reasserts itself ; the ecstasy of eternity passes, 
and time resumes its sway over us, time that gives 
us nothing because it has itself no existence, and 
can only promise us something in the future, crying 
as it flies past on its swift wings: "to-morrow and 
to-morrow ! " 

This great figure standing in front of the mists 
of antiquity, the first man with clear heavens above 
him, outlined our leading relations to life and to 
God. He had in some way, it matters not how, 
got a clear sight of God, and it worked upon him 
in a legitimate way : it awed and commanded him, 
and drew him out of himself toward God, so that 
God was more to him than his child ; for it is in the 
nature of God and of man, that God should be more 
to man than his child, even his only child. And 
having such sight of God, he has like fajth in Him, 
a vast, all mastering, all possessing faith answering 
all the ends of righteousness, nay, it is righteous- 



GOD OUR REWARD. 96 

ness. What is external righteousness, — the petty 
details of doing, or not doing, — to this passionate, 
immeasurable loyalty of faith? The faith itself 
sweeps to the outermost skirts of conduct and in- 
fuses its devotion into every act and feeling. Here, 
in such a faith as this, not in any legal posturings 
and formal coming and going, is found the true phi- 
losophy of life. Now, what shall God do for a man, 
how deal with one who trusts him in this way ? He 
will be his shield, will protect him against the world 
and mischance and his own finiteness. And he will 
see to it tliat this other great necessity, this looking 
for a fulfillment of labors and desires, is met ; and 
he will see to it in a personal way, and, in a sense, 
become the reward itself : "I will be thine exceed- 
ing great reward." 

And so Abram lived his life of solitary obedience, 
waiting but never doubting, patiently enduring, 
looking for the promised country but never finding 
it, and at last died without its sight. But all along 
God was rewarding him, making life tolerable if 
not triumphant, calm if not joyful, while the great, 
main desire of his life, the dream and aspiration of 
his years, is carried over into the world to come. 
He found a country, but it was beyond the Jordan 
of death. It was not a land flowing with the milk 
and honey of earth, of heavy clusters of grapes and 
abundance of corn, but was a heavenly country : its 
riches were the fruits of his own patient endurance, 
its valleys were the depths of his own humility, its 
mountains were the exaltations of his own faith, all 
wrought into some fit expression amongst the reali- 
ties of eternity. 



96 GOD OUR REWARD. 

I like to draw water from these ancient wells, es- 
pecially from this dug by our father Abraham, be- 
cause its waters are so sweet and wholesome. They 
spring up from the central depths of our common 
nature, they quench the strong thirsts of our immor- 
tal being. There is a sublime naturalness and sim- 
plicity in the way in which Abram is led through 
life. God deals with him and he deals with God, 
in lofty, natural, and direct ways. He needed very 
nearly the same things that we need, and God led 
him very nearly as he leads us. 

We will break up this divine rewarding into 
some of its particulars, with the question. How does 
God become our reward ? 

It is a striking fact that God's leading represen- 
tations of true and righteous life are that it is not 
in vain, that it will be rewarded. This is the truth 
that underlies that commonest of all religious words, 
bless, a word used with such iteration that its mean- 
ing has well-nigh dropped out of it. That God 
will bless, is the sum of our prayers. We mean, if 
we mean anything, that God will prosper us, that 
success may attend our labors, that we may reach 
happy consummations, that we may get good things, 
that we may receive benefits of some kind. Thus 
our commonest and deepest feeling in religion is 
keyed to a divine reward ; it shows that we were 
made to have it, clear proof that we are the heirs 
in God's kingdom, that the ascetic idea of going 
without is not in his plan. The little child believes 
that all things belong to it and claims everything 
it can touch, book, or toy, or picture, stretching out 



GOD OUR REWARDo 97 

its hands for the moon with a divine sense of own- 
ership. And the child is not wrong ; the child is 
never wrong in its spontaneous conduct, acting out 
what God put into it, reflecting the thought of the 
face that its spirit beholds. All things do belong 
to it, and are withheld only while it is in its spirit- 
ual minority, for purposes of discipline, and until it 
learns to distinguish between the good and the evil. 
But at last God's children, being heirs, inherit, and 
all things become theirs. These are not idle words, 
nor a dream of conceited religionists. Down equally 
deep with the truth, that man, like God, is a giver, 
is the other truth, that he is a receiver, like God 
in this also for whom are all things. The largest 
generic truth from which we tbink, is that God 
made man in his own image, a truth not so much 
to be restricted as spread out and applied in the 
whole field of human speculation. If it opens abys- 
mal depths and heights in God, from which we 
shrink as not for us, it is still God who summons 
us towards Himself, even to a seat in his throne. 
This ceaseless cry and strife for something we have 
not got, this outstretched hand of humanity, is not 
a caprice, nor yet an act of selfishness, but rests on 
this divine, inborn sense of heirship to all things ; 
only, we forget that we must inherit through God, 
that only the meek possess the earth, the pure in 
heart see God. But what a truth ! What trans- 
forming power is wrapt up in it ! What a light it 
throws on toil, and narrow circumstance, and all 
these restraints and bonds that tie us down to this 
place and that task ! I take it that a great part oi 

7 



98 GOD OUR REWARD. 

this earthly tuition and discipline is not more to 
work out the evil that is in us, than to prepare us 
to receive what God has in readiness to give us. I 
cannot otherwise interpret the great and terrible 
withholding seen in the vast majority of lives ; this 
fearful negative must mean a gracious positive. I 
know that we are often summoned to think of all 
worlds from the conditions of this, to reason that 
because they are hard here they will be hard else- 
where, but the logic is meagre. I grant that if 
present and known conditions are the only factors 
in the argument we have a very dreary outlook, 
almost worse than none. But when God is intro- 
duced into the argument, it changes its drift and 
conclusion, for He is just and good, and He is also 
eternal, and hence his plans are not to be judged 
by their appearance in any section of time. I know 
not how else to put any meaning on life. Here 
is a widow, alas, how many such ! poor and all but 
friendless, suffers perhaps for food, shivers with 
cold, no past but suffering, no future with any hope 
or light, life a simple struggle to keep her soul alive 
as God would have her, but she reads, " all things 
are yours," and carries the promise up to God in 
faith. What will you do with such a life ? What, 
but say that the withholding is but a preparation 
for, and pledge of, a corresponding giving. Or, 
take some finer spirit, a mind athirst for knowl- 
edge, burning to see the world and the works of 
men, to look on art, to hear music, to know history 
and literature, eager to push out into this great 
world of thought and fact, filled with a passion 






GOD OUR REWARD. 99 

truly divine to see and know and realize ; but here 
he is, poor, fettered to some given place and task, 
perhaps watching a shuttle to earn the bread of de- 
pendent ones. What a mal-adjustment! What a 
blindness of fate ! What a cruelty of providence ! 
Yes, unless sometime and somewhere this sublime 
hunger is satisfied. There is running through all 
Christ's teachings a subtle thread of reversal ; it 
seems to cover circumstance as well as character ; 
it is not always based on the moral ; Lazarus passes 
before our eyes without character; the poor have 
their blessing on the ground of poverty. The scales 
of allotment and condition will be evened, the lack 
here will find its fullness there, whatever it be. 
We reason far more truly from the character of 
God than from his acts. One we know, the other 
is partial, in process ; one is absolute, the other is 
phenomenal ; one is eternal, the other is for the 
time being. So, I do not build my expectations of 
the future on the processes and conditions now 
going on, but rather on the absolute nature of God, 
which is love ; it is the nature of love to meet 
wants, and will omnipotent love leave any wants 
unmet ? I do not forget that life is largely made 
up of duties and responsibilities, but these are 
simply forerunners, having no value in themselves, 
and but the drill and education necessary for a re- 
ception of God's measureless gifts. Hence, as soon 
as we begin to believe in God, to see, obey, and 
trust Him (the sum and definition of faith), God 
begins to feed us with promises as He did Abram. 

•Everything is for the believer; but he does not now 
L.cFC. 



100 GOD OUR REWARD. 

want, nor could lie now receive, everything, but 
only certain things, and so God promises and gives 
these, varying the form to suit his expanding na- 
ture. Abram longed to become the head of a na- 
tion, and God made him the father of all believers ; 
he desired a country, and God gave him an eternal 
possession. And so it is with all who have turned 
their faces trustingly towards the great Giver; it 
were well to know and feel it ! God is an imposer of 
duties ; yes, but beyond that He is the Rewarder of 
those who diligently seek Him. God says, " Thou 
shalt and thou shalt not," and scourges the disobe- 
dient ; yes, but above and beneath all this He is the 
giver of eternal life to all who will, and this must 
contain all things. 

Such a thought is wholesome and heartening; it 
is intended to give tone and color to life. Hence, 
it should enter fundamentally, and in its true order, 
into theology. First of all, God is a giver. Hence, 
away back in the dawn of history, God said to the 
first man worthy to hear it : " Now that you be- 
lieve, I would have you begin b}^ thinking of me 
as one who will be your shield and reward : I will 
take care of you, I will give you unspeakable bless- 
ings." God began with Abram in this way ; it 
was not hard duty first and the joy of reward 
finally, but the great, glad hope and promise came 
first. It is a common thing to mistake the key-note 
of our faith ; we trust Providence as though it were 
a last resort, and think of duty as perhaps a noble 
yet rather heavy thing to do. But not to such a 
key is the psalm of beUeving life to be sung ; it ia 



GOD OUR REWARD. 101 

to be caught rather from these ancient words of 
God : " Fear not : I am thy shield and thy exceed- 
ing great reward." 

It may be felt by some that this matter of divine 
reward is, after all, a vague thing. What is it ? 
Where is it? How does it come about? Is it a 
direct gift, or is it wrought out through laws ? It 
is vague 'because it is a matter of trust and gradual 
realization. What God has in reserve for those 
who believe on Him, cannot now be measured. Nor 
do we know through what new conduits the reward- 
ing joys of eternity may flow into us, nor what fresh 
fountains of bliss may be unsealed within us. The 
spirit of man is an unsounded, perhaps fathomless 
depth, a store-house of measureless possibilities. 
To assert what man will do or not do, what he will 
become or cannot become, is to assert a knowledge 
of the infinite ; we have no knowledge of man that 
wholly defines and compasses him. Here all the 
beauty of the earth and the majesty of the sky 
come to us through one sense, all the sweetness of 
melody through one sense, all the lusciousness of 
fruits through one sense, all the fragrance of odors 
through one sense, — small inlets and few for things 
so many and vast. But as we know through sci- 
ence that there are sounds we do not hear, and 
colors that we do not see, and odors that we do 
not smell, it is not improbable that we shall be 
opened wider, and at more points, to the wonders 
and delights of the universe ; for it were unreason- 
able to suppose that the head of creation does not 
at last comprehend creation, making gains as we go 



102 GOD OUR REWARD. 

hence like that of the embryo, which, when born 
into the world, finds its one sense of feeling sup- 
plemented by sight and hearing. So, also, the few 
faculties through which we now receive pleasure, 
intellectual, social, physical, may be increased, so 
that, instead of touching the external world at 
these few points, we may touch it at a thousand, 
and every point of contact be an inlet of joy. Or 
these present faculties may be enlarged to an im- 
measurable capacity. But these things are matters 
neither of knowledge or faith ; they are the wise 
dreams of the " prophetic soul " that may turn to 
reality. 

It is as far as we can go in this matter to say 
that God rewards in two ways : by the results of 
obedience, and, in a less clear but no less real way, 
by the direct gift or impartation of Himself. They 
are not distinct, but stand in the relation of process 
and end, or condition and result. 

Forever and forever is it true that reward follows 
obedience, tritest yet truest of all words. It is the 
one all embracing, unfaltering truth, the gravita- 
tion of the moral universe, — Obey and be blest ! 

Obedience does not merely avoid the suffering of 
broken law, but it yields a positive reward. Every 
act of obedience, if consciously rendered and so be- 
coming an act of faith, has a reward commensurate 
with the act. It might have been otherwise, and 
obedience had for its only end the cold result of 
suffering avoided. But we are made on a more 
generous plan. Whenever, anywhere in this uni- 
verse, any soul hears the divine voice saying, " Thou 



GOD OUR REWARD. 103 

shalfc " and reverently obeys, it finds, however it be 
with other results, this unfailing one, a deep and 
peaceful satisfaction in having obeyed. And so it 
is that a life of humble, honest labor may have over- 
spreading it a steady sense of reward. The man 
goes to his daily toil and comes home at night, with 
small returns perhaps that are quickly spent, a 
somewhat weary and rather hopeless tread-mill it 
seems, but he says, " I have at least the reward of 
doing my duty." Without it he would despair; 
without it humanity would not tolerate the burden 
of existence. This reward can be greatly height- 
ened by getting clear sight of such duties as they 
are related to God's will. The unconscious reward 
is real and large ; no little child ever returned from 
a wearying errand without it ; no savage in Africa 
ever obeyed the inward voice whispering in his dull 
brain, '' thou oughtest," but God dropped the reward 
of peace into his heart. The inner life of heathen- 
dom has not yet been presented to our thought. 
When will missionaries tell us of the good they find 
as well as the evil ? It is the struggling and over- 
borne goodness that would most appeal to our sym- 
pathy ; it is the smouldering embers of not yet 
burnt out virtues that would stimulate us to add 
the gospel flame. One has recently spoken : " Call 
them heathen who will; but from what I know 
of their hearts, they do not seem to be forsaken 
by the Divine Spirit." ^ As deep calls unto deep, 
so every loyal heart, touched by God's Spirit, goes 

1 See letter from a missionary in India to the Rev. Newman Smyth^ 
D. D., in The, Independent, Jan. 18, 1883. 



104 GOD OUR REWARD. 

out in yearning, helpful love towards these heathen 
who pray as they best know, and not wholly in 
vain. 

But a clear view of life as reflecting God's will, 
lifts the obedience into the consciousness where all 
the faculties play upon it. 

The reward of simple, daily duty is sometimes 
best seen in the dark contrast of disobedience, as 
the stars shine fairest upon the blackness of empty 
space. We often grow dull to the value of our vir- 
tues, we forget the rewarding power of our habitual 
obedience. We are temperate, industrious, thrifty, 
patient, kind, true, faithful, wise, reverent, but for- 
get that home, love, respect, peace, health, strength, 
property, and perhaps honors are their rewards, 
paid at the counter of God's daily reckoning. 
Hence, when duty grows dull, it is well to look off 
into the black regions of disobedience. Alas ! we 
seldom have need to look far. Lust, with its satiety 
or disgrace or corruption ; drunkenness with its tyr- 
anny, and waste and poverty and disease; selfish- 
ness come at last to despairing solitude ; dishonesty 
breeding suspicion and alienation ; avarice with its 
heart of ashes; folly with its harvest of bewilder- 
ment and blindness; impiety standing on the bor- 
der of life, nothing behind or before and despair 
within; — in the gleams of such black flames we 
read again the lesson of obedience and shudder at 
the thought of ever having doubted its rewards. 

Still the positive view is the better one, for we 
must learn to value goodness in its own light and 
by its own weight. There will thus come about at 



GOD OUR REWARD. 105 

last, as in the Christ, a joy that is independent of the 
on-going world, that is not heightened by the sense 
of external evil, but is the straight outcome of a heart 
entranced with goodness. When one thus fills every 
mould of duty with sympathetic obedience, he is 
doing more than pleasing God and blessing man, he 
is unsealing hidden depths within himself that are 
stored with God's own eternal joy. I beg you to 
think of this; it is not so trite as you may suppose. 
In our iterated appeals for duty we commonly base 
them upon pleasing God and blessing man, that is, on 
its inherent rightfulness and its beneficence, leaving 
out the profounder argument that it sets one's own 
nature in order so that by its very law it evolves 
joy, for no harp was ever strung capable of uttering 
such music as the soul of man attuned to righteous 
obedience. * It is hearing such music that makes 
men willing to die for a cause, to live patiently un- 
der wrong, to plead for the reform for which the 
age is not ripe, to stand true while evil corrupts the 
world. The New Jerusalem lieth four-square ; so 
stands he who has learned to render a trustful obe- 
dience to his God • he stands true to the world, true 
to himself, true to the eternity about him, and true 
to God. 

If there were not such a reward as this, there 
would be no motive sufficient to propel man on this 
long voyage of existence. For the reward or mo- 
tive must be within and have its play within the 
circle of his own being simply because he has no 
permanent relations to anything without. There 
are but two abiding realities, God and self ; all else 



106 GOD OUR REWARD. 

is phenomenal, transient. The earth whereon we 
stand, the air we breathe, the firmament that in- 
spheres us, will pass away; the goodly fellowship 
of humanity will yield before the separating years ; 
the hands clasped in tenderest love will part; the 
child, the friend, the whole encircling life of the 
world, will be lost to us for a while at least, as we 
go "to the land of darkness and the shadow of 
death." The present complexity of life and rela- 
tion settles surely into a simplicity in which only 
self and God remain — self alone with God ! Hence 
life in its full sense, ideal life, is simply a true ad- 
justment and interplay between these two, self 
living unto and in God, and God returning upon 
self with joy, — a process more stable than the uni- 
verse and as enduring as God himself. The final 
word of the soul is : " And now I come to Thee." 
After one has entered on such an obedience as this, 
he soon begins to find that he is mainly acting in 
the sphere of two personalities, — himself and God. 
I mean this : he is not acting under certain laws 
and principles, — these conceptions grow dim and 
become mere phrases and conveniences of speech ; 
but he comes to realize that he is living unto, and 
as it were, in God. And as he goes on, all things at 
last resolve themselves into this complection ; it is 
God whom he serves, and God is his reward ; he 
wants no other; he lives and dies with one all-sat- 
isfying word in his heart and on his lips : — 

" Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? 

And there is none upon earth that I desire be- 
sides Thee." 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 



"Love is inexorable as justice, and involves duty as the sum of the 
eoramandments of the law." — Mulford, Republic of God^ page 190. 

* ' My h eart 's subdued 
Even to the very quality of my lord." 

Othello, I. 3. 

** The love of Jesus is noble, and spurs us on to do great things, and 
excites us to desire always things more perfect." — The Imitation of 
Christ, Chap. V. 

" The hold which Christianity has depends on Christ, and the hold 
which Christ has is chiefly dependent on those personal affections and 
reverential regard which souls that receive Christ entertain towards 
Him." — Pkes. WooLSEY, Sermons, page 355. 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 



" And verily I say unto you, wheresoever the gospel shall be preached 
throughout the whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall 
be spoken of for a memorial of her." — St. Mark xiv. 9. 

The fact that three of the New Testament writers 
rehearse this story shows how fully they entered 
into Christ's purpose to perpetuate it. They have 
different plans, and omit or include events and words 
accordingly, but they do not omit this event and 
Christ's comment upon it. Evidently it is a marked 
thing. It is the only intimation made by Christ 
that any record was to be made concerning Him. 
Here is something, He says, that shall have a uni- 
versal record. Yet these faithful historians tell the 
story somewhat differently, not in a contradictory 
way, but as each felt it ; as a poet, a historian, and 
a moralist might describe a battle, harmonizing in 
the main points, but each coloring his account with 
the hue of his own mind. This variation is a great 
help in getting at its meaning. St. Matthew and 
St. Mark adhere to the express purpose of Christ 
to set the deed of this woman before all the world, 
and so put their emphasis upon its memorial feature, 
but St. John seems to forget this, and can only re- 
member that the anointing was for the burial of 



110 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

his Lord. His love blinds him to the main point 
enjoined by Christ; but the omission itself is sig- 
nificant, as it shows how the central idea had already 
been accomplished in him; he does not think of 
the woman, but of the service done to his Master. 
And the event has been used by a great preacher of 
the age, kindred in spirit to this disciple, to show 
how keen is " the insight of love " in detecting the 
true uses and ends of service. The apostle and 
the preacher were held by a feature of the event, 
but how beautiful and profound the attraction ! 

The beauty and pathos of the incident is apt to 
shut us off from any critical thoughts about it. 
The passion and humility of the love, the abandon 
of its expression, the fine symbolism of its minuter 
features, anointing not the head only but the feet, 
and gathering from thence to the flowing honors of 
her head the now sacred ointment ; these points 
catch and hold the eye till we are inclined to think 
its main use is to adorn the sacred page as a pic- 
ture. But it is more than a picture. If events are 
grouped and colored in such a way as to excite our 
sense of the beautiful, we may, indeed, pause a 
moment to reflect how inevitably divine things are 
beautiful, how surely a true act has a grace of its 
own ; how, as we come into the higher ranges of 
conduct, truth and beauty and goodness melt into 
each other. But such thoughts must be transient, 
the delicious recreation of a moment only, after 
which we pass on to the substantial truth behind 
the picture. When we approach it with analysis, 
we are struck with the fact that in certain respects 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. Ill 

it lias features exceptional and somewhat contra- 
dictory to any others found in the history of Christ. 
A woman deeply moved breaks a box of costly oint- 
ment upon his head and feet. In rescuing her from 
the criticism provoked by this act, He exalts her and 
her deed into world-wide fame. There is no par- 
allel to this in all these histories. It is not only 
exceptional, but it is not plain why it is so. The 
pledged honor seems inordinate. The woman, in a 
beautiful and touching way, sacrificed a cherished 
treasure upon the person of Christ, — certainly not 
a great act unless it were great in some unusual 
way. It involved but expense, and no personal 
danger. It had in it no element of self-denial, no 
great force of will, nothing of the stalwart graces 
of endurance or heroic purpose. Outwardly it fell 
far short of what men have always been doing and 
enduring for Christ. The catacombs of Rome are 
full of the ashes of believers who were persecuted 
for his sake, and the crumbling tablets are fast 
refusing to reveal their names. For centuries a 
great army of martyrs marched to prison, to the 
arena, to the stake, but leaders and host are now 
nameless. There are multitudes to-day whose ser. 
vice seems far more valuable, and is rendered at 
far greater cost, than the one deed of this woman, 
but no provision is made for their special remem, 
brance. It seems inconsistent also with Christ'a 
method, for it was this sort of honor and praise 
that He rigidly excluded. It was a fundamental 
point in his kingdom that personal exaltation had 
no place in it ; the exact reverse ^as fundamental. 



112 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

Something else must be meant than that this woman 
was to be heralded wherever the Gospel might go. 
Indeed, when we look carefully at the story, we find 
that it does not provide the requisite elements of 
such a fame. The two writers who alone give the 
laudatory promise, withhold the name of the woman, 
so that if personal fame be meant by Christ, it is not 
connected with any person ; while John, who omits 
the laudatory promise, alone indicates the name. 
It is as though a monument were built to some hero 
and his name omitted from the inscription. There 
is indeed such a monument in the Public Garden 
of Boston, that celebrates the discovery of ether, — • 
nameless of all except the mercy thus achieved, — 
a monument prophetic of the age when there shall 
be " no pain any more," but equally Christian in 
the unwitting exaltation of good above the doey^ of 
good. It hints the way to a true reading of the 
incident before us. Christ evidently had some other 
purpose than to bestow personal fame on this wom- 
an; this were out of keeping with true womanly 
desire, with the nature and method of his kingdom, 
with his personal principles, and with the whole 
tenor of his teaching. But why does He use words 
that seem to imply it ? Reading the story more 
carefully we find that it is not the woman who is 
to have world-wide mention, but her deed^ this 
that she hath done, and herself as some nameless 
one who rendered it. The deed is the centre of 
significance ; there is something in this little act of 
reverent affection so peculiar and so valuable as 
to justify the honor put upon it. Let us search it 
out. 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 113 

I think we are near the truth when we say that 
the deed happened to be the exact type of that feel- 
ing and relation to himself which Christ regarded 
as necessary, and so he seized it as a perpetual ex- 
ample ; that is, He takes it for use. There is here 
no sentimentalizing, no lapsing into unusual meth- 
ods. Instead He takes the act — a personal act in- 
deed, but still the act only, — and makes it a part 
of his gospel. It memorializes not a person but a 
temper of mind, yet in and through an environment 
of personality. This explains why the woman is 
made so prominent, while the central thought rests 
on the action ; it explains why the world-wide me- 
morial is nameless. It has in it an element for- 
ever essential to a true reception of the gospel ; 
hence Christ connects it with preaching, it is to 
go wherever the gospel goes, and to become a part 
of it. 

Looking at it more closely, we find as its main 
characteristic that it was the expression of a feeling, 
and that it was intensely personal. This woman 
had come under a great sense of gratitude to 
Christ; she had found in him a response to every 
better feeling, an insight into her heart that was 
like self-knowledge, or deeper still, a revelation of 
self to herself, a sympathy that was as a new life. 
The thought of Him drew her to goodness, and 
made evil no longer possible. And so He became 
enshrined in her soul almost as God ; nay, all her 
thoughts of Him were like her thoughts of God, 
except that their dread was softened by a human 
grace. He was inspiration, guidance, strength, 



114 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

everything to her ; hence the tribute. She does 
not, with long and careful thought, consider how 
she may forward his cause or do some good work 
that may please Him, — that may come after; now 
there is but one thing for her to do ; it must be 
something for Jesus himself, upon his person, so 
that it shall express how personal and vital is his 
influence upon her. It is not truth, it is not an 
idea that inspires her, but this Jesus himself, and 
so upon Jesus himself she lavishes her tribute of 
reverent love. 

But this is a gospel to be preached in all the 
world : How shall it preach to us ? We have no 
seen and present Lord to receive the raptures and 
gifts of our love. We can lay no golden or odorous 
gifts by his cradle, we have no ointment for his 
wearied feet, no spices for his burial. Such ser- 
vice, were it possible, would seem somewhat apart 
from even our warmest thought of Christ. Wo 
cannot conceive ourselves as acting or as required 
to act in quite that way. The outward parallel is 
not for us, but the inward parallel sets forth an 
unending relation and an unfaltering duty. Christ 
asked from men nothing of an external nature, but 
He steadily required their personal love and loyalty. 
He did not ask of any a place to lay his head, it 
mattered little if Simon asked Him to his feasts, 
but, once there, it did matter whether Simon loved 
Him or not. Waiving all personal ministration. He 
yet claims personal love. Strange spectacle ! Here 
is a man indifferent to what is done for him or to 
him, but demanding love ! a human contradiction, 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 115 

but hiding a divine truth. It is not truth or purity 
or wisdom you are to love, but me. You are to bs 
faithful, not so much to your convictions as faithful 
to me. Nay, v^hat you do is of secondary impor- 
tance if you first love me. 

Thus Christ presented Himself before the world, 
drawing it off from its speculations, its ritualized 
dogmas, its traditional ethics, and fixed its thought 
upon Himself, a new centre of truth and inspira- 
tion. His position is without parallel. The phi- 
losophers had said, "Accept our ideas, adopt our 
systems," but Christ said, ''Accept we." No relig- 
ionists have ever made a similar claim. Gautama 
said, " This is the way, by renunciation." Moham- 
med said, " There is heaven." They sunk them- 
selves in their theories, and, while claiming leader- 
ship, put the centre of their systems in some idea 
or external end, but Christ merges all ideas and 
methods in devotion to Himself, and the devotion 
is summed up in love. A most strange thing ; — 
here is one whose main thesis is abnegation of self, 
and is himself its prime illustration, and at the same 
time sets himself up as the centre of the world's 
love ! It is out of such contradiction that we are 
to look for the issue of the finest truth, as vision is 
born of darkness and light. » 

There is in this attitude no final abjuring of phi- 
losophy and system and doctrine, but only the adop- 
tion of a higher and surer method of reaching them, 
a vitalizing and humanizing of them. In its last 
analysis the idea is this : Truth entering human 
society through a person, and making love its vehi' 



116 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

cle. For personality is the secret of both the Chris- 
tian and Judaic systems, — revelation by a person. 
The peculiarity of these systems is not their truth ; 
there is not much question about truth. Men are 
sure to find it out first or last. And ethical truth is 
almost the first to clear itself in the human under- 
standing. The old philosophies and mythologies 
are packed with undoubted truth; enough for all 
social and personal need if that were all that was 
necessary. It was inevitable that the precepts of 
love as the sum of duty should have early utter- 
ance ; the human mind could not go amiss of them. 
But to connect them with a person for authority 
and inspiration was another matter ; the efficacy of 
the precepts lies in the Person that utters them, 
and in the relation of this Person to man. The 
fault of Matthew Arnold's definition of God, " a 
power not ourselves that works for righteousness," 
is, that it blurs the personality behind the right- 
eousness, and so deprives it of motive. Whatever 
significance there is in the Jewish Scriptures lies in 
the personality emblazoned on every page, a God 
who is not a power only, but also a person, and a 
power because He is a person, not a " stream of 
tendency " flowing in free or hindered currents, des- 
tined perhaps to flow, but capable also of resistance, 
with some question of ultimate success, but the / 
am, the Personal Being ! Cast this out, and they 
might have been burned with the books of Alex- 
andria with little loss. But because they contain 
this uniform and self-attesting assertion of a per- 
sonal God, as personal as man is, and the basis of 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 117 

his personality, they have lain warm and nourish- 
ing at the roots of that civilization which is domi- 
nating the world. 

There is reason in this. A relation of duty 
cannot be fully established and sustained except 
between persons. I owe no duty to force or to 
" a stream of tendency," I merely fall in with, or ( 
resist it, without any play of my faculties except > 
some sense of prudence. This would seem axio- 
matic, yet it is in the face of such axiomatic truth 
that we are asked to accept the theories of an un- 
knowable God, theories that annihilate duty by 
rendering impossible a relation of duty. The He- 
brew and Christian Scriptures have presented duty 
to the world, not only in a rational but in a com- 
manding way, because they assert in the loftiest 
way the two correlative elements in duty, namely, 
the personality of man and the thorough person- 
ality of God. It is Christ's revelation of this per- 
sonality, on each side, that constitutes Christianity. 
It was long before its facts crystallized into systems. 
The church sprang up about the revealing person 
of Christ ; love to him was the bond that held it 
together ; and so it continued to be till the image 
of Christ grew dim, and the Master was buried first 
beneath his church, and then under formal render- 
ings of his truth, and to-day Christendom puts its 
churches and its theologies before its Lord. 

There are those who contend that what we need 
is not the Christ himself but the truth of Christ ; 
that if we accept the principles He taught, there 
ueed be no special enthusiasm or even thought 



118 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

about their author. And thus Christianity is grad> 
ually reduced to a philosophy, and thence into mere 
maxims about good and evil, as though even in 
Christ's day they were not the lumber of the world. 
But let us see if Christ was mistaken in planting 
his system upon personal love and devotion to Him- 
self. Or, more broadly, why does this Faith, that 
claims to be the world's salvation, wear this guise 
of personal relations ? Simply because in no other 
way can man be delivered from his evil. There 
may be exceptions here and there in whom natural 
dispositions are so happily blended that they have 
attained to a stainless if cold virtue. But take men 
as they are, the bulk and mass of humanity, they 
are too blind to find their way by the light of pre- 
cepts, too firmly wedded to evil to be moved by 
theories of virtue, too solidly imbedded in the cus- 
tom of an "evil world" to be extricated by any 
play of reason. And as to experience, the fancied 
teacher of wisdom, with its " hoard of maxims," it 
is the weakest of all. Polonius is but " a tedious 
old fool " to the Hamlets who are struggling with 
their own weakness in the hard play of human life. 
It is the subtlest thought in the profoundest drama, 
that Hamlet is searching for a human love to up- 
stay and inspire him ; it is the key to all his wild, 
testing talk with Ophelia ; the love he found, but 
there was no strength in it ; it could not draw to- 
gether his scattered and faltering energies and set 
them to some definite end, and so his life sweeps on 
to its tragic close. There is in all these simply lack 
of motive-power. Men need instead something of 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 119 

tlie nature of a passion to dislodge them, some deep 
swelling current of feeling to sweep them away 
from evil towards goodness, from self towards God. 
Suppose Christ had simply depicted the miseries of 
sin and the inherent fitness and excellence of the 
virtues, what would He have done ? What become ? 
Simply another Rabbi with a few followers for a 
generation. He began instead by forming personal 
relations with a few men, captivating them by his 
divine charms, making them feel at last that his 
love was more than a human love, even God's own 
love. Ideas, truths, principles, these are not lack- 
ing, but the essence of his power is not in them, for 
they have no power. The great, reflective novelist 
has well stated it in her earlier and wiser pages : 
" Ideas are often poor ghosts ; our sun-filled eyes 
cannot discern them ; they pass athwart us in their 
vapor, and cannot make themselves felt. But 
sometimes they are made flesh ; they breathe upon 
us with warm breath, they touch us with soft re- 
sponsive hands, they look at us with sad, sincere 
eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones ; they are 
clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts-, 
its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a 
power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are 
drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is 
drawn to flame." And yet it is ideas that the loud- 
voiced wisdom of the age would have us believe to 
be the salvation of the world ! God is driven far- 
ther and farther into unknowable heavens, the 
Christ is made to figure only on a dim and blurred 
page of history, the Spirit is thrust out on some 



120 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

score of intellectual difficulty, all reduced to ideas 
and ghostly at that, and a selfish world is sum- 
moned to drop the principles that have made it 
what it is and that stand to it for the solidest real- 
ities, by a phantom-show of ideas for which it does 
not care, or but admires as some far-off unattainable 
glory ! The Faith that is to redeem the world 
must have a surer method, it must have a vitalizing 
motive, and such a motive can proceed only from a 
person using the strongest force in a person — love. 
And thus the Christ comes before humanity, mak- 
ing God's love manifest in a human and personal 
way, so unfolding his divine beauty in word and 
deed that men kneel before Him, subdued into glad 
receptivity of his truth. Thus it was that the mul- 
titudes thronged about Him, that Zaccheus was won 
by his condescending pity, that this woman broke 
upon Him her fragrant tribute of honor, that 
Thomas said, " Let us also go, that we may die with 
Him," and Peter, with a devotion that outran his 
courage, " Even if I must die with thee, yet will I 
not deny thee," that John leaned upon his bosom, 
that the women of Jerusalem bewailed Him on the 
cross and lingered about his sepulchre, that Joseph 
claimed the privilege of his burial, that the disci- 
ples mourned while He lay in the tomb, that joy 
gave wings to their feet when they heard of his res- 
urrection. And when He finally ascended, and the 
full scope of his love came to be realized, when his 
character and being began to stretch away into the 
infinite under the revelation of the Spirit, it stirred 
them to even deeper passion. His love, seen now 



LOVE TO THE CHEIST AS A PERSON. 121 

to be divine, awoke in them all the divineness of 
love, and became the measure of their devotion. 
From that day to this, the faith of believers has 
clustered about the personal Christ, growing cold 
and effete as it has drawn off from Him towards 
philosophy, and waxing warm and effective as it has 
come near to his glorified person. I grant that this 
love varies in its external features. In these later 
days, it has the calm of thought, the sobriety of 
conviction, the breadth that springs from a realiza- 
tion of his work. The semi-erotic aspect it has 
sometimes been made to wear and that is still 
weakly cherished in some quarters, has largely 
passed. The love we now render is the fidelity of 
our whole nature, the verdict of our intelligence, 
the assent of our conscience, the allegiance of our 
will, the loyalty of sympathetic conviction, all per- 
meated with tender gratitude ; but it is still per- 
sonal, loving Him who loved us and gave Himself 
for us. 

There are reasons for the assertion just made, 
that it is only through such a love that we can be 
delivered from ourselves and our evil. It is no 
novelty even in the thought of the world. " George 
Eliot " says : ^ "It is one of the secrets in that 
change of mental poise which has been fitly named 
conversion, that to many among us neither heaven 
nor earth has any revelation till some personality 
touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing 
them into receptiveness." It only needs to make 
this assertion universal to have in it a definition of 

1 Daniel Deronda, i'.. 36. 



122 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

the process of Christian faith, and almost a vindi- 
cation of it by its superb insight. How otherwise 
shall we begin to secure this process of conversion ; 
how uproot the selfishness that makes it neces- 
sary ? Authority fails ; the commandments are in 
the Old Testament, also in other sacred books it is 
claimed, but they had not much honor in their 
fruits. But when they issued from the lips of the 
living Christ, they fell into men's hearts like fire, 
and wrought in them as a passion. Will not 
thought open a path between evil and good ? 
Thought may resolve conduct and character into 
their elements, but it cannot separate them. Phi- 
losophy makes slow progress in saving men ; it has 
eyes to see man's misery, but no hands to lift him 
out of it. If, upon such a basis, one begins to 
struggle towards the good, the result is a hard, 
painful life, sustained by mere will, without warmth 
or glow or freedom, often overshadowed by doubts 
and mazed by sophistries, for there are philosophies 
and philosophies, a life more deficient and less ex- 
alted than it seems to itself, because it is not con- 
stantly matching itself with a personal standard. 
The measure of rules and bare ideals has little 
working efficacy, it is unsubstantial, it does not rec- 
ognize the complexity of life, for only life can meas- 
ure life, it guides but imperfectly and lacks the 
strongest of motive-powers — inspiration. There is 
light enough but no warmth, matter enough but no 
attraction. Goodness that is enforced or devised 
has no propagating power. You cannot think, or 
plan, or legislate it into existence ; it is not a prod- 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 123 

net of syllogism, nor a deduction of knowledge, nor 
a fruit of experience, but is akin to life and must 
be begotten. And so character is placed under the 
lead of personal love. At the threshold of life we 
are met by affections that check and call us off 
from inborn selfishness, the love of parents and of 
brother and sister, and then that fiery passion that 
ushers in a love that makes of twain one, and then 
the diviner, downward-flowing love upon children ; 
it is in such ways as these, all personal, that evil is 
kept or crowded out, and we become tender and 
generous and pure. But beyond lies the broader 
sphere of humanity, for which there is but small 
native passion, and hence but little inspiring force 
impelling us to its duties. Yet this is the field of 
our highest duties, for here are our widest relations. 
And it is here chiefly that Christ becomes an in- 
spiration through the loyalty of love. Christ is 
humanity to us. He has hardly any other relation ; 
He was not a father or husband, as son and brother 
his relation is obscured, his citizenship is not em- 
phasized. In a certain sense, it is hardly necessary 
to have an inspiring and saving Christ in these 
relations, they enforce themselves, they are still 
full of their original, divine power. Not so, how- 
ever, when we get outside of these domestic and 
neighborly instincts. Our relation to humanity at 
large is so blurred that it fails to enforce its duties. 
Hence Christ put himself solely and entirely into 
this relation, the Son of man, the Brother of all 
men, the Head of humanity, and there sets in play 
the divine forces of universal love and pity and 



124 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

sympathy. When our love meets his in the loy* 
alty of faith, we find ourselves rightly related to 
humanity and to God. Faith in Christ has for one 
of its main ends the proper adjustment of the indi- 
vidual to society. The secret, essential relation of 
the Christ to humanity, and of humanity to God, 
flows to us along this channel of obedient, inspiring 
love, and so we come to love our neighbor as our- 
selves, and God supremely. 

But the truth may be set in even a larger light. 
The love of Christ not only delivers us from evil 
and unites us to humanity, but it does the wider 
work of uniting us to God's eternal order both on 
earth and in heaven. 

The one supreme truth is that G-od is love. This 
is the secret of the universe. Creation is the out- 
come of this fact ; the whole order of all things is 
grounded in it ; the harmony of the universe is its 
realization. There is therefore no possible rela- 
tion for a human being to stand in to God and to 
his creation but that of love. Not to love God is 
to be in confusion, at odds with creation, aside 
from the order of the universe. The whole crea- 
tion swims in a sea of eternal love. Every law and 
process and form, material and spiritual, angelic 
and human, individual and social ; every relation, 
every method, is established in this love. This 
makes love the supreme and all-embracing duty ; it 
is thus only that we come into accord with the 
world, and fall into the current that sweeps through 
eternity. Thus love, that seems the most volun-i 
tary thing, and the thing most to be kept at our 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 125 

own disposal, to be given or withheld as we see 
fit, becomes an imperative obligation, for it is the 
only possible bond by which we can hold our place 
in God's created order, the one highway between 
self and all other things and beings. Not to love is, 
at last, utter and absolute separation from all else 
— even from self; it is the outer darkness where 
existence itself becomes bewilderment. To get into 
this love, which is God, and respond to its mighty 
harmonies, and know its perfect peace, this is the 
great and final achievement. Consider this truth 
until you have mastered it, or, at least, got some 
glimpse of it, and then put beside it the revelation 
of this love in the Son of God, and you see at once 
why you are to love Him. It is simply putting 
yourself in accord with the ruling principle of the 
universe, it is falling into line with the eternal 
order; for the whole universe is wrought into Him; 
He is the only begotten Son of the Father ; in Him 
the entire order of nature is set forth ; in Him the 
whole of God's will is perfectly obeyed ; He is the 
perfect Righteousness. And in Him the full order 
and will of eternal Love is brought into humanity, 
where human love, your love and mine, may lay 
hold of it and play into it. Nor can there be con- 
ceived any other method by which human love can 
enter into the eternal Love; it must go by the eter- 
nally ordained path of personality, and the person- 
ality must be a manifestation of all the fullness of 
God. Hence there is no other name under heaven 
wherein we must be saved. 

The great problem set before the Faith, — nay, 



126 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 

let US not generalize, — the imperative need of every 
man is to get over from the natural and evil side 
of life to the Christ side, to give up worldly v^ays 
of feeling and acting, and pass into the Christly 
way ; to die unto self and let Christ be formed in 
him, the true son of God and of man taking the 
place of the Adamic self, — a very definite and im- 
perative work lying before every human soul. It 
is the secret of life, it is the key of destiny. How 
to bring it about is the question. It is an achieve- 
ment, for it is. nothing less, wrought, so far as we 
are concerned, by love to Christ, and by the ser- 
vice of love. For the whole nature follows love. 
Whithersoever it goes all the faculties troop after 
it. It is the magnet of human nature ; where the 
heart is there are all the treasures of mind and 
will and moral nature. Let this love be planted 
in Christ, — won and fixed by our ever deepening 
sense of truth and goodness and all moral beauty, 
— and we begin to go over to Him upon it as upon 
a bridge. Character itself cannot be imparted or 
exchanged, but everything that goes to make char- 
acter may be imparted, or quickened into action. 
Using this love as if it were some broad stream, 
the truth, the strength, the humility, the sympathy, 
the spiritual insight, the obedience, the very right- 
eousness of Christ float down into us and become 
our own, and so at last we are one with Him and 
one with God, for He and God are one. 

Let us not strive to find any other path for indi- 
vidual or social regeneration ; there is no other 
path. Here is the way, the truth, the life. We 



LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 127 

cannot save ourselves ; we cannot think or will 
ourselves into the life of God ; we cannot drift into 
it on the tide of time. We must go by the eter- 
nally ordained path of love to Him who is the reve- 
lation of eternal Love, — a Person, — and suffer 
his love to charm us into a kindred love ; we must 
lay our hearts close beside his, that they may learn 
to beat with the same motion ; our wills near his, 
that they may fall into its harmony. 



THE CHEIST'S PITT. 



" Nothing but the Infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of 
human life." 
• .••..........« 

" When you have lived longer in this world, and outlived the enthusi- 
astic and pleasing illusions of youth, you will find your love and pity for 
the race increase tenfold, your admiration and attachment to any par- 
ticular party or opinion fall away altogether." — John Inglesant, Vol. I., 
page 121. 

"Thou wilt feel all, that Thou mayest pity all." — Christian Year^ 
Tuesday before Easter. 

** He came laying His hand upon our head in sickness, His fingers 
upon our eyes, sighing out His soul upon us, breathing His peace into us, 
touching, taking us by the hand as we sink, entering into our homes, 
lifting us up in fever, teaching, chiding, enfolding, upholding, enlarging, 
inviting, encouraging, drawing, calming, controlling, commanding." — 
Kev. H. S. Holland, Logic and Life, page 219. 



THE CHRIST'S PITY. 



" But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion 
for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having 
a shepherd." — St. Matthew ix. 36. 

We often speak of love as the ultimate passion, 
but there is a depth even beyond love. For love is 
largely its own reward, and so may possibly have an 
element of imperfection, but pity or compassion 
has not only all the glory and power of love, but it 
forgets itself and its own returning satisfactions, 
and goes wholly over into the sufferings of others, 
and there expends itself, not turning back or within 
to say to itself, as does love, '' How good it is to 
love! " Hence Balzac, in " The Alchemist," in de- 
picting an ideally perfect love, makes the object of 
it deformed, thus profoundly indicating that love 
is not at its height and perfection without the ele- 
ment of pity. It may be a factor in the solution 
of the problem of evil that it calls out the highest 
measure of the divine love ; a race that does not 
suffer might not have a full revelation of God's 
heart. What I Create a race miserable in order to 
love it ! Yes, if also thereby its members shall learn 
to love one another, and if thus only it may know 
the love of its Creator. In the same way it is man's 
consciousness of misery, or self-pity, that reveals to 



132 THE Christ's pity. 

him his own greatness, — a thought that Pascal 
turns over and over. 

Pity is love and something more : love at its 
utmost, love with its principle outside of itself and 
therefore moral, love refined to utter purity by ab- 
sorption with suffering. A mother loves her child 
when it is well, but pities it when it is sick, and 
how much more is the pity than the love ! How 
much nearer does it bring her, rendering the flesh 
that separates her from it a hated barrier because 
it prevents absolute oneness, dying out of her own 
consciousness, and going wholly over into that of 
the child whose pains she would thus, as it were, 
draw off into her own body ! To die with and for 
one who is loved — as the poets are fond of showing 
— is according to the philosophy of human nature. 
Might not something like it be expected of God, 
who is absolute love ? And how shall He love in 
this absolute way except by union with his suffer- 
ing children ? Such is the nature of pity ; it is a 
vicarious thing, which bare love is not, because it 
creates identity with the sufferer. 

The text is one of the peculiarly revealing pas- 
sages of the Christ's life. Here we behold in Him 
the blending of the highest forms of both divine 
and human love : the incarnation of one, the per- 
fection of the other, one in their expression, for 
love is the reflection of unity. We see Him moving 
through the villages telling the good news of the 
kingdom of God at hand, healing all sickness and 
suffering that came under his pitying eye, and 
moved with compassion for the multitudes He could 



THE CHRIST'S PITY. 133 

not reach. The people throng about him, as they 
always will when a true teacher speaks. They 
open to Him their hungry hearts, their bewildered 
minds, their despairing hopes for this world and 
that to come. Or they stand before Him, dull and 
dead as the forms and doctrines under which they 
had been smothered, or they bring to Him their 
nearer sorrows of wearying, life-sapping disease. 
For this compassionating teacher takes in the whole 
range of suffering ; He sees that man is one ; that 
bodily sickness and spiritual ailment are not far 
apart; that both in physical disease and moral 
degradation the common need is life. And it is to 
restore life to humanity that He has come ; not to 
save souls, not to save bodies, but to save soul and 
body: He has not come to build up " a faded para- 
dise " in this world, nor to unlock the gates of a 
paradise beyond, but to establish an order here so 
strong and well founded that it shall endure forever. 
But as He looks over these suffering multi- 
tudes and reflects how little He can do for them, 
how few He can reach, how slow are the processes 
by which they are delivered from their sufferings ; 
as He reflects how soon they will lapse out of the 
inspirations He has stirred, and turn again to their 
blind teachers ; as his thought goes out to the wide 
world of suffering of which this is only a faint sign, 
he is moved with compassion. How can He leave 
them when He can do so much for them ; leave 
them to bear their sicknesses alone, to wander 
about in this world that is so full of God's truth 
and love without any one to show it to them ; to be 



134 THE Christ's pity. 

harassed by fears of death and haunting thoughts of 
the future, and vague, fearful thoughts of God, and 
by the unrest of conscious evil and all the weariness 
of unexplained life ! And so in a sort of despair — 
it is the only thing He can do — He turns to his dis- 
ciples and says : " Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, 
that He send forth laborers into his harvest." It 
was not a vain request ; the next we see is these 
disciples, themselves the answer of their own 
prayer, armed with saving and inspiring power, 
going out into this world of unredeemed suffering. 
They go on an errand of compassion ; they are to 
declare the kingdom of heavenly love as at hand, to 
heal the sick, to cast out devils, to raise the dead, 
— all in that large-hearted measure which they 
had realized in themselves. 

In speaking further, we will guide our thoughts 
by naming several points. 

1. Christ's habitual look at men had regard to 
them as suffering. No other aspect of life seems to 
have struck Him with equal force or to have so 
claimed his thought, that He did not feel its sorrow. 
The foundation of his work is ethical, but the tone 
is drawn from his sensibilities rather than from his 
judicial sentiments; the ethical is but the instru- 
ment ; to get rid of the sorrow is the end. 

The painters, and especially that nearly greatest 
one. Da Vinci, have given us a man burdened with 
his own sorrows, but when the artist comes who ap- 
prehends the true Christ, he will figure a sympa- 
thizing Christ ; the drawn lines of finest sensibility, 
a mouth tender and trembling with just uttered 



THE Christ's pity. 135 

words of compassion, and eyes fathomless with un- 
utterable pity. I do not suppose that Christ was 
unobservant of, or unresponsive to, the pleasures of 
men. He did not sit at feasts with sad words upon 
his lips, but still his thought struck through these 
gladder phases and saw the lack behind the pleas- 
ure, saw that the meat and the wine stood for no 
full satisfaction, that the laughter was not the echo 
of a real joy. Nor yet do I mean that Christ's 
thought did not strike deeper still and find back of 
all suffering the eternal joy that underlies exists 
ence ; that He did not know and feel that the key- 
note of the universe is blessedness. He not only 
knew this, but He knew it as no other ever knew it. 
In the last days of his earthly life, when his eyes 
were lifted somewhat from their long gaze at the 
world and turned to the heavens. He spoke of little 
else. This eternal joy had become his own, its se- 
cret won by obedience and sacrifice, full and well- 
ing over in desire that it might be full in those 
about Him. But He did not habitually take this 
larger and deeper view ; it was, in some sense, a re- 
served view. To have had it before Him in all its 
force would have bred a sort of ecstasy unfitting for 
his work. Instead He looked at men and life as 
they are in the present moment. It is a main point 
in studying the eternal Christ to separate Him from 
all time-conceptions. In nothing is his divinity 
more attested than in his sharing the divine con- 
ception of what we call time. Like God He inhab- 
its eternity in all his thought and speech. We do 
not coordinate God with space and time, these are 



136 THE CHRIST'S PITY. 

human and conditional ; with God time is an eter- 
nal now. If Christ has any thought derived from 
God, it is this. He did not stand beside a man 
racked with pain and exult in his future health. 
He had a more present cheer for those who wept 
over their dead than the hope of a future resurrec- 
tion. It is the significant feature of his thought 
and teaching that the forces and facts of eternity 
are drawn within the present ; the kingdom of God 
is at hand here and now ; the power of the resur- 
rection is realized now in those who believe. It 
was the same with suffering ; the divine perfection 
of his sympathy drew his thought away from its 
future and linked Him to its present. 

2. The question arises : Is this a true or a false, a 
healthy or a morbid view of human life ? When one 
reads Pascal, whose whole thought is based on the 
misery of men, one says, this is morbid, this cannot 
be the philosophy of life. But the airy sentimen- 
tality of the optimists satisfies us as poorly ; we feci 
that Pascal has an acuter insight and the greater 
weight of facts. The question cannot be answered 
by determining whether there is more happiness or 
suffering. Of this it would seem there could be no 
doubt. It is a good world ; God pronounces it such 
while He is making it. All good has not evaporated 
with moral evil ; it was Pascal's intemperate the- 
ology that led him to the opposite conclusion. This 
great intellect did not draw his data from life nor 
from his own sufferings ; he was a recluse and had 
small range of social facts, and his acuteness for- 
bade him to reason from himself; he simply rea* 



THE Christ's pity. 137 

soned on the basis of a doctrine of original sin that 
emptied human nature of all its contents, — a mis- 
erable, not to say irredeemable, condition indeed ! 
There is, no doubt, suffering vast and keen, but it 
is small and shallow to the happiness that enspheres 
life as the air enfolds the earth. In individual 
cases evil or mischance may turn the balance to- 
wards suffering, and sin dims the brightness of the 
inwrought joy of life for us all. But could we 
measure the satisfaction that comes from natural 
affection, from the exercise of bodily and mental 
functions, from our adaptations to the world and 
society, from the mysterious sweetness of life itself, 
we should find our miseries outweighed many-fold. 
The mere fact that we stay in the world is proof 
that we really make the unconscious estimate. If 
this were not so, not only would the race not en- 
dure existence, but it could not endure it. When 
it becomes as a whole miserable rather than happy, 
it will die by natural consequence as a man dies by 
disease. Suicide is not oftener an indication of in- 
sanity than that the scale has inclined to the wrong 
side in a personal estimate of happiness and misery. 
Pessimism has no need to urge its logical plea for a 
self-destruction of the race; it will destroy itself 
when it becomes conscious that the pessimist's creed 
is true. 

But none the less is suffering real, and none the 
less will a sympathizing nature pause upon it rather 
than look through to the underlying joy, and espe- 
cially a great pitying nature like Christ will pause 
upon it and see little else. It is not a matter of 



138 THE cheist's pity. 

more or less, but of appealing anguish. The most 
imperative appeal made to love is that of suffering ; 
joy takes care of itself. Jacob had eleven sons 
about him, but Joseph was not. The shepherd has 
ninety and nine safe-folded, but " one is away on 
the mountains cold." A group of happy children 
bless a fireside, but the parents watch them with a 
shaded joy, thinking of the wanderer, dead or liv- 
ing they know not, but lost to them and to good- 
ness. Put yourself in a great city, walk its fine 
streets, visit its theaters and parks, watch the gay 
throngs ; spend days thus, and then one hour where 
poverty and vice unite to create wretchedness, — for 
one hour only see the little children sick and starv- 
ing, the sewing-women in garrets, the dying on 
their beds of rags ; breathe the air, take in the squa- 
lor, the vice, the utter misery ; get one glimpse of 
this life, and the gay multitudes are forgotten in 
the deeper impression made here. Or spend an 
evening in a pleasure-party, and then pass to the 
bedside of a sick child, hear its moans, watch its 
restless tossings and appealing look for impossible 
relief, — which of the two pictures stays longest in 
any feeling heart ! It is not a matter of more or 
less suffering that gives the tone to one's thoughts, 
but sensitiveness to whatever suffering there may 
be. Hence Christ paused here in his look at man- 
kind ; nothing diverted his gaze from its suffering. 
In the weariness of the flesh, He sometimes with- 
drew from the aching vision into the secrecy of the 
mountains, and at moments He exulted as He saw 
the Satan of this misery falling like lightning from 



THE CHRIST'S PITY. 139 

heaven, and the burden of sorrow rolling off from 
the heart of the world, but for the most his eye 
rested steadily upon the suffering before Him : a 
man of sorrows, but not his own sorrows ; a man 
of griefs, but griefs that were his own only as He 
took them from others into his own heart ! 

It is not to be thought, however, that this Christly 
pity embraced only the conscious suffering of men. 
It is an undiscerning sympathy that reaches only 
to ills that are felt and confessed. We every day 
meet men with laughter on their lips, and unclouded 
brows, who are very nearly the greatest claimants 
of pity. Pity him who laughs but never thinks. 
Pity the men or women who fritter away the days 
in busy idleness, calling it society, when they might 
read a book. Pity those who, without evil intent, 
are making great mistakes, who live as though life 
had no purpose or end, who gratify a present desire 
unmindful of future pain. Pity parents who have 
not learned how to rear and train their children ; 
pity the children so reared as they go forth into 
life with undermined health and weakened nerves, 
prematurely wearied of society, lawless in their dis- 
positions, rude and inconsiderate in their manners, 
stamped with the impress of chance associations 
and unregulated pleasures. No ! it is not pain that 
is to be pitied so much as mistake, not conscious 
suffering, but courses that breed future suffering. 
Who, then, calls for it more than those who have 
settled to so low and dull a view of life as not to 
feel the loss of its higher forms, content with squa- 
lor and ignorance and low achievement or mere 



140 THE CHRIST'S PITY. 

sustenance? It is now quite common to say, at 
the suggestion of some very earnest philanthropists, 
that the poor and degraded do not suffer as they 
seem ; that they get to be en rapport with their 
surroundings, and so unmindful of their apparent 
misery. This may be so, but even if the wind is 
thus tempered to these shorn lambs of adversity, it 
is no occasion for withholding pity. Nay, the pity 
should be all the deeper. The real misery here 
is, that these poor beings do not look upon their 
wretched condition with horror and disgust, that 
they are without that sense and standard of life 
which would lead them to cry, "This is intolerable; 
I must escape from it." Hence, the discerning 
Christ-like eye will look through all such low con- 
tentedness to the abject spirit behind it, and there 
expend its pity. Not those who suffer most, but 
oftener those who suffer least, are the most pitia- 
ble. The naked and starving, the widowed and 
orphaned, and even those about to die may have 
currents of life flowing quick through them, and 
life always contains the seeds of joy. Pity rather 
the man who is content with this world, and is 
governed by its small prudencies ; pity him who is 
blind to God's inspiring presence ; pity the man 
who is feeding himself with low pleasures and 
through beastly appetites. The deepest pity of all, 
" tear-dropping pity," will rest where it is impos- 
sible to awaken moral feeling or the sense of noble 
things. Then breaks out the divine cry : " If thou 
hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, 
the things which belong to thy peace ! " 



THE CHRIST'S PITY. 141 

I speak at length on this point, because so fine a 
force as human pity ought to be wisely directed. 
It should be something more than an emotion 
springing out at the sight of suffering ; it should bo 
a matter of insight, of careful measurement, and 
just adaptation. 

But, beyond the unrealized suffering, how muclJ 
is there that is not so overlaid ! It is not necessary 
to paint the picture that we see so often, so often 
indeed that we do not see it. Suffer ? Who does 
not suffer ! What body that is not at times racked 
with pain, what house long escapes sickness, what 
home that sooner or later is not overshadowed by 
death. Poverty, business troubles, domestic anx- 
iety, mistake and its bitter fruit, regret for the past^ 
darkened futures, the slow eclipse of bright hopes, 
the life that has missed its meaning, — let us not 
make little of these. They may not be the greater 
part of even any single life, but they are real. Get 
the verdict as you will ; read it in the pages of the 
masters of human nature whose greatest works are 
tragedies, listen to it in the songs of the poets, or 
trace it in the faces of men, or find it in the sad 
pensiveness that grows with the years, and it will 
be the same. It is a suffering world, not wise 
enough to avoid disaster, not strong enough to 
wrestle with nature, not yet good enough to reap 
the rewards of virtue, not aspiring enough to attain 
the joy and peace of faith.* It is a fallen world, 
fallen away from its ideals and inwrought meth- 
ods, and hence it cannot be other than a suffering 
world. It is the mystery of humanity ; beast and 



142 THE Christ's pity. 

bird reach their appointed measure of bliss, but 
man fails of his. The fact itself bespeaks a rem- 
edy ; the anomaly asserts a return of the law and 
reign of joy. Because infinite love pities, it will 
deliver ! 

3. It is not a long step from the Christ's pity to 
that it evokes in those who believe in Him. 

There is something beyond a sense of justice and 
fair dealing, something beyond even good-will and 
love. The highest relation of man to man is that 
of compassion. Hardly separable from love in 
words, it may be in conception ; it is love at its 
best, love quick, love in its highest gradation ; it is 
the brooding, the yearning feeling, the love that 
protects while it enfolds. It is not laid upon us as 
a bare duty, but something to which we are born 
and trained, the evolution of the highest moral sen- 
timent. Hence all suffer in common ways and in 
almost equal degree except when sin throws its 
leaden weight into the balance. Every throb of pain 
I feel is a divine call to pity your pain. When my 
child dies I am called to weep by the grave of 
yours. When poverty with its stings and con- 
straints is your portion, God bids me enter into 
your condition with pitying heart and hand. Our 
sorrows are not our own, to be secretly wept over or 
soon dispelled. God forbid that any of us should 
pass through suffering and come out of it, not only 
unchastened, but with no tenderer feeling for the 
whole suffering humanity ! It should be the first 
question with one who in any way suffers, as it is 
nearly always the first impulse: To what service 



THE Christ's pity. 143 

of ministering pity am I called ? For the ultimate 
purpose of God in humanity is to bring it together. 
No true thinker dissents when the process of history 
is defined as reconciliation. The main human in- 
strument is that we are considering ; it is the finest 
and most dominant force lodged in our common 
nature ; it brings men up to the point from which 
they launch into the Universal Love. 

The law and the method run very deep. One of 
the chief problems of the day is : how to reconcile 
the antagonisms of society. While there have been 
in previous ages a wider space between classes and 
far heavier oppression and wrong, never before 
have there been so intense a consciousness of op- 
pression and wrong and so threatening restlessness 
under it. Communism and Nihilism and the uni- 
versal organization of labor and capital into oppos- 
ing forces, to-day at peace, to-morrow at war, are 
not happy prognostics. Nor do the thoughtful pass 
by the segregating tendency going on in all manu- 
facturing regions, with its inevitable alienation, and 
only kept from revolt by steady prosperity ; they 
know to what such alienation leads at last ; the 
logic of history and of human nature points to one 
tragical conclusion. Argument will not close this 
chasm, force only widens it, prosperity but keeps it 
as it is for the hour. Other methods must be used 
to overcome these threatening evils. Social science 
is doing something, but knowledge does not lead 
the regenerating forces of society; it may marshal 
them and point the way, but the leader will be a 
diviner force, a subtler inspiration. The opposing 



144 THE CHRIST'S PITY. 

classes must be brought closer to one another, first 
by the exercise of justice and then by the exercise 
of Christian sympathy. When the rich get near 
enough to the poor to feel the constraint and per- 
plexity and bitterness of their poverty and so are 
moved to share its burdens, there will be peace in 
society ; never before I Society itself will at last 
exact justice, but justice is but the portal of that 
fair temple in which a united humanity shall serve 
and love and worship. 

Great care must be taken to keep this fine qual- 
ity from sinking into a mere sentiment. There is 
indeed, 

" The sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe, 
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched, 
Nursing, in some delicious solitude, 
Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies." 

It is not a gush of feeling, it is not made up of tears 
or sighs, nor is its exercise to be confined to actual 
pain, but is to be carried back into the region of 
causes^ and here the wisest compassion will be busi- 
est. A vast amount of pain and sorrow is due 
to injustice : the extortions of the strong and the 
rich, the unequal distribution of the burdens of 
society, the discrimination against woman in the 
laws and in payment for labor, the tyrannical op- 
pression of poor women in cities, the greed of land- 
lords, the horrors of tenement houses, the narrow 
margin between wages and living, the legal indorse- 
ment of dram-shops, the tragedies of the stock-mar- 
ket, the robberies of monopolies, the facility of di- 
vorce, — these are some of the fountains out of which 
flow steady streams of misery. Hence, a wise com* 



THE Christ's pity. 145 

passion will strive for just laws, and honest admin- 
istration, and a better order of society. So of 
sickness : it mostly springs from lack of sanitary 
knowledge and regulations. It is beautiful, the 
pity that hovers by sick-beds and flies to pestilence- 
stricken cities, but it is a larger and wiser pity that 
strives to secure the conditions of health. So of 
intemperance, without doubt the greatest evil of the 
day ; it is a true pity that lifts up the fallen, but 
that is finer and truer which goes back into the re- 
gion of causes, — wise nurture, and restraint of the 
greed that lives on the evil. So a discerning pity 
will watch with jealous eye the great, deep wrongs 
of society, and when the conflicts that they beget 
come on, as come they must, it will know where to 
array itself ; as Shakespeare, who never discourses 
more wisely than when he dilates on this theme in 
two of his dramas, says : — 

" I show it most of all when I show justice; 
For then I pity those I do not know." 

There is indeed an orderly development of human 
society, not to be unduly hastened, but it is by 
struggle, and one of its factors is the human will 
and heart. 

It was on the Judean counterparts of such suffer- 
ers that the pitying eye of the Christ steadily rested. 
The well-to-do, ''the fat and greasy citizens," He 
passed by, giving his pity to the stricken deer of 
society; they that are whole have no need of a 
physician. Translate the phrase that describes the 
class He most sought, "publicans and sinners," and 
we have the vast pariah class, that outer fringe of 

10 



146 THE CHRIST'S PITY. 

society that has fallen away from its true order and 
is dragged along, a shame and a clog, hated and 
hating, redeemable by no forces it knows, and 
kept at the lowest level of misery and degradation 
by the contempt and neglect of the better classes ; 
a mighty throng that renders needless any asser- 
tion of depravity or any argument for a redemption. 
Here was the special field of the Christly service. 
Life is complex and humanity is broad, and Christ 
covered it all, but because He was under the condi- 
tions of humanity He suffered Himself to divide his 
thought and pity where they were most needed. 
His example has all the weight of an express com- 
mandment : 

" — It most invectively pierceth througli 
The body of the country, city, court, 
Yea, and of this our life. " 

The respectable, the rich, the ranks of orderly so- 
ciety, these have their claims upon us, but the pay- 
ment of them belongs rather to the gospel of pru- 
dence and easy love. The true gospel of Christly 
pity points to these palsied and spirit-possessed 
children of sin and misfortune. A true recognition 
of it would well-nigh reverse the whole order of 
church procedure ; it would put the grand church 
in the slums and the humble chapel in the avenue. 

I have not been speaking of a sentiment but of a 
law^ something that underlies not only Christianity 
but society, and underlying one because it underlies 
the other, for their spheres and methods must ulti- 
mately be the same. 

It is the tenderness of eternal love that binds 



THE CHRIST'S PITY. 147 

God to his creatures. It is the tenderness of human 
love, wise, strong, and pitiful, that binds men to- 
gether. And it is out of such sympathy only that 
peace is born for community or nation. 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 



"Goodness doth not move by being, but by being apparent.*'— 
Hooker, Book I., vii. 7. 

"In Christianity nothing is of real concern except that which makes 
us wiser and better ; everything which does make us wiser and better is 
the very thing which Christianity intends." — Stanley, Christian In- 
stitutions, page 314. 

"The New Jerusalem, metropolis of earth and heaven, is not a city 
built of stone nor of any material rubbish, since it has no need of sun 
or moon to enlighten it; but its foundations are laid in the eternal wants 
and passions of the human heart sympathetic with God's infinitude, and 
its walls are the laws of man's deathless intelligence subjecting all things 
to his allegiance. Neither is it a city into which shall ever enter anything 
that defileth, nor anything that is contrary to nature, nor yet anything 
that produceth a lie ; for it is the city of God coming down to men out of 
stainless heavens, and therefore full of pure unmixed blessing to human 
life, and there shall be no more curse." — Henry James, Society the 
Redeemed Form of Man, page 473. 

" "We ought to receive with the utmost confidence those truths which 
pervade, like an atmosphere, the whole Bible." — Rev. Newman Smyth, 
D. D., Orthodox Theology, page 139. 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 



*' The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor j 
He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, 
And recovering of sight to the blind, 
To set at liberty them that are bruised, 
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 

St. Luke iv. 18, 19. 

When we have once measured these words, we 
shall be reminded of the tent of the Arab chief: 
when folded it could be carried in his hand, but 
when spread it was wide enough to shelter his whole 
tribe. 

A study of the incident under which they were 
spoken in the synagogue of Nazareth is peculiarly 
rewarding, because it looks off in so many directions : 
into remote Jewish history, into present customs, 
to the nature of the gospel, to its manifold methods 
of working, to the heart of God, to the inspiration 
of Christ ; and finally it discloses the weakness and 
evil of human nature when its prejudices and tra- 
ditional thoughts are assaulted. It is so rich in 
material and association that a book could legiti- 
mately be made from it. It would be a book his- 
torical, ecclesiastical, political, theological, ethical, 
psychological, and the treatment would not be 
forced. Were a thoughtful student to sit down to 



152 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 

the study of this passage, he would first be led to 
an investigation of the captivity of the Jewish 
nation in Babylon, and of the details of that cap- 
tivity ; the peculiar forms of suffering endured, 
and the effects in body and mind, and upon national 
beliefs and customs. He would then be led to 
etudy the literature of the book of Isaiah, and of 
the relation of the Hebrew prophet to the' people, 
. — almost a unique thing in history. He would 
then pass to a study of the political economy of 
the Jewish state, and especially to that peculiar 
feature of it by which every fifty years society was, 
to a certain extent, resolved into its elements and re- 
constructed ; all alienated lands restored, all bond- 
men liberated, probably all debts canceled, — the 
most unique feature in human legislation, and one 
of the wisest and most gracious, affording, as it 
did, a barrier against the aggressions of capital, 
checking the growth of oppression, taking off the 
burdens from the poor and unfortunate, and giving 
them another chance by restoring them to freedom 
in their circumstances, an inwrought, constitutional 
defense of the people against their natural oppres- 
sors, a system instinct with liberty and grace and 
every divine quality. It was an arrangement full 
of wisdom, in that it was constantl}^ restoring the 
nation to the great social principles on which it was 
founded, principles of righteousness and mercy and 
freedom, — an order linked in with its religion and 
with sacrifice for sins that were also burdens and 
bondage, — a vast, stupendous system, overwhelm- 
ing in its significance, sweeping all about the life 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 153 

of every man, covering him with its grace, from 
the misery of outward misfortune and mistake to 
the guilt of secret crimes ! 

If it is asked where Jesus refers to this system, 
the answer is in the phrase, " the acceptable year 
of the Lord." We might read these words many 
times, and not suspect that Christ referred to this 
political feature of the Jewish commonwealth, unless 
we had learned that the year of jubilee was com- 
monly known as " the acceptable year." The 
phrase is thus taken out of the hands of a narrow 
theology that uses it as a time-word, — a certain 
day beyond which there may not be another in 
which God is gracious, and instead is made to 
stand for the ushering in of an order and an age 
of the freedom and mercy and justice presaged by 
the year of jubilee, an age of spiritual and also po- 
litical freedom, an eternal reign of righteousness 
and love. 

Our student will then be led to study that pathetic 
story of the captivity, when the daughters of Jeru- 
salem wept by the rivers of Babylon and hung their 
harps upon the willows, and the prophets sank into 
lamentations or rose into ecstatic visions of deliver- 
ance and return ; thence to the special forms of that 
oppression, how it broke the hearts and bruised 
and weakened the bodies, especially inducing blind- 
ness, and thence into a study of the return and 
upbuilding. He will then pass to a study of the 
synagogue, find out when the people began to as- 
semble in these edifices built, like our churches, 
throughout the country, in which the people met 



154 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 

every Sabbath to bear tbe law read and discussed. 
He will, with awakened curiosity, be led to see in 
the synagogue the germ or framework of the Chris- 
tian Church, and to suspect the reason why Christ 
said nothing about an external church, because here 
was one already existing in external form sufficient 
for all practical purposes, — a very simple, rational, 
and convenient institution, fit to shelter and house 
believers every one of whom has become a king and 
priest to God. He will see that the synagogue, 
and not the temple, furnished Christianity with its 
Church. And he will be apt to close his study with 
very slight regard for the vast hierarchical systems 
that envelop and weigh down the faith, and to con- 
clude that the Church is a very simple thing; at 
most but a body of believers come together to re- 
peat the words of their common faith, without any 
priest at all, but only a minister for simple con- 
venience. 

Our student will come to know much about the 
customs of the people, and of the procedure in 
the synagogue, notably that children were required 
to attend its service and hear the Law, and join in 
its simple worship. He will learn that certain parts 
of the sacred books were appointed to be read on 
certain days, and much also of ancient manuscripts, 
their shape, texture, how kept and read, and of 
Oriental ways of teaching. As he thus studies, 
he will be forced to the imperative conclusion that 
he is reading a history of the most trustworthy 
character, and not a tissue of myths and late re- 
membrances ; and if he has the gift of logic an4 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 155 

inslglit, he will be drawn away from any thin, semi- 
learned theories that may have clouded his faith in 
the record. 

He will then pass to a study of the matter of 
Christ's preaching. He finds that Christ read the 
appointed lesson for the day, which happened to 
be the day of Atonement, but not the whole of it ; 
that He pauses in the middle of a sentence because 
the rest was not to his purpose, and he is flooded 
with revealing light shed by the omission, for the 
Christ has not come to proclaim " the day of the 
vengeance of our God." That conception was not 
to enter into the order He had come to declare. It 
was an undue presence of that conception that made 
Judaism imperfect, and John the Baptist less than 
the least in the kingdom of heaven. It was the 
absence of that conception of God that furnished 
the positive elements of the revelation of God which 
Christ was making. 

Our student, as he scrutinizes this preaching, finds 
in it a twofold meaning, though but one spirit. 
This Gospel is primarily a deliverance shadowed by 
the year of jubilee ; it embraces the physical and 
social ills of men and their spiritual ills. The in- 
extricableness with which they are united in the 
words of Christ suggests to him the profound mys- 
tery of body and spirit, mind and matter, environ- 
ment and spiritual history. He will find in it a 
denial of all Manichean and Stoic notions that the 
soul is independent of the body, and is to be treated 
in another fashion, but rather will he find the 
broader philosophy, that man is to be regarded as 



156 TEE CHRIST AS A PEEACHER. 

a unit, body and soul making up one life, and tliat 
what truly blesses one blesses tbe other. He will 
discover a certain temper in these words that fur- 
nishes a keynote to the Christian system, and a 
prophecy of its work. He finds in them a theology 
and a life, a doctrine and a practice, and that the 
two are inseparable. 

Our student, as he goes on in the history, gets as 
deep an insight into the human heart as into the 
divine. He reads again the oft-recurring story, a 
great spirit rejected by friends and neighbors ; it is 
only the carpenter's Son, the boy who grew up in 
the midst of us, and now, forsooth ! claiming to be 
a prophet ! And they drive him out of their city. 
He finds in this no strange history, but only an 
illustration of a daily fact. Men never see the 
great in what is about them. We ride without 
eyes under Greylock, and go to the White Moun- 
tains for sublimity. The moon in Venice, and the 
sky in Naples, have more charm than here at home. 
The weeds of other climates become our flowers, 
and our flowers seem to us but weeds. There is 
little heroism, little devotion and nobility on our 
square mile ; there are no epics or lyrics of human 
deed and feeling sung in our streets ; the great, the 
beautiful, the excellent, is at a distance. Why we 
think thus it may be hard to tell, unless it is from 
instinctive reverence on the one hand, and on the 
other, because the realization of greatness makes us 
aware of our own littleness, and so provokes us to 
envy and anger. 

Quite a broad field our student has traversed in 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 157 

studying this short paragraph of St. Luke's Gospel, 
— from the political constitution of Judea down to 
the subtilties of our common nature ! 

We pass now to this preaching of Christ, and 
will speak of its substance, its philosophy, and its 
power. ^ 

1. Its substance. Without doubt we have here 
the keynote to his entire teaching. This was his 
gospel from first to last, whatever He may have said 
of an apparently different tenor on special occasions. 
It is a derogation and an absurdity to suppose, as 
is sometimes asserted, that Christ, finding this kind 
of preaching did not answer, changed his tone to 
a "woe." It may be reasonably supposed that 
Christ did not feel his way along, but that He un- 
derstood himself and his work from the first, and 
struck at once to the heart of his business. This 
appears still more plainly as we realize that, here 
at the outset, He brings out the whole divine mean- 
ing of the Jewish economy. It is understood that 
great numbers of persons are still reading that pur- 
blind mass of crudities known as the " Mistakes of 
Moses." Does the author of that book know what 
the Jewish system means when you get down to 
the soul of it ? Does he tell you that its keynote 
is mercy, and that its method and aim is simply 
that of deliverance and freedom from the actual 
ills of life? Does he tell you that it is a system 
shot through and through with great redeeming 
and liberating forces ? Does he tell you that it 
takes a nation of slaves, ignorant, barbaric, be- 
sotted in mind and degenerate in body, and by a 



158 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 

shrewdly adapted system of laws lifts it steadily 
and persistently, and bears it on to ever bettering 
conditions and always towards freedom ? Does he 
tell you that from first to last, from centre to cir- 
cumference, it was a system of deliverance from 
bondage, from disease, from ignorance, from anar- 
chy, from superstition, from degrading customs, 
from despotism, from barbarism, from Oriental vices 
and philosophies, from injustice and oppression, 
from individual and national sin and fault ? Does 
he tell you that thus the nation was organized in 
the interest of freedom, planned to secure it by a 
gradually unfolding system of laws, educational in 
their spirit, and capable of wide expansion in right 
directions ? Nothing of this he sees, but only some 
incongruities in numbers and a cosmogony appar- 
ently not scientific. 

It is the peculiarity of Christ's preaching that He 
pierces at once to the centre of this great deliver- 
ing system, and plants his ministry upon it. He 
takes its heart, its inmost meaning and intent, and 
makes them universal. He draws them to the front, 
leaving behind the outworn framework of laws and 
ordinances, and lays them directly before the eyes 
of the people. " This is the meaning of your law, 
this is the secret of your nation, namely, deliver- 
ance, freedom." 

We cannot conceive a better Gospel nor a pro- 
founder social order than this. It accords with the 
largest view of humanity, whether it be scientific, 
historical, or religious. Science and history and re- 
ligion tell a like story of deliverance, emergence 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 159 

from the lower into the higher, struggle towards 
the better, deliverance from evils, and so a passing 
on into righteousness and peace. Christ supple- 
ments and crowns this order of nature and provi- 
dence by his Gospel. " I am come to save you in 
full, body and spirit, to make you free indeed by 
a spiritual freedom ; I am come to declare that this 
deliverance, which is the secret of your national 
history, is to become universal, the law of all na- 
tions and the privilege of all men." Here is a 
gospel indeed ! 

The peculiar feature of this quotation from Isaiah, 
which Christ makes his own, is its doubleness. 
" The poor," — but men are poor in condition and 
in spirit. " The captives," — but men may be in 
bondage under masters or circumstances, and also 
under their own sin. '' The blind," — but men may 
be blind of eye and also in spiritual vision. " The 
bruised," — but men are bruised in the struggles of 
this rough world, and also by the havoc of their 
own evil passions. Which did Christ mean ? Both, 
but chiefly the moral, for He always struck through 
the external forms of evil to the moral root, from 
which it springs, and of whose condition it is the 
general exponent. And He always passed on to the 
spiritual end to which external betterment points. 
He was no reformer, playing about the outward 
forms of evil, — hunger, poverty, disease, oppression, 
• — giving ease and relief for the moment. He does 
indeed deal with these, but He puts under his work 
a moral foundation, and crowns it with a spiritual 
consummation. Dealing with these. He was all the 



160 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 

while inserting the spiritual principle which He calls 
faith. Unless He can do this, He is nearly indif- 
ferent whether He works or not. If you cannot 
heal a man's spirit, it is a small thing to heal his 
body. If you cannot make a man rich in his heart 
and thought, it is a slight matter to relieve his pov- 
erty. At the same time, Christ will not separate 
the two, for they are the two sides of one evil thing. 
Poverty and disease and misery mostly spring out 
of moral evil. They are not the limitations of the 
finite nature, but are the fangs of the serpent of 
sin. To refer evil, physical or moral, to develop- 
ment, betrays clumsy observation. The imperfec- 
tion of development is a phrase the parts of which 
do not go together. In a true and orderly develop- 
ment, every part and point are perfect. A half- 
grown animal is never blind because it is half- 
grown, or paralyzed because it is young, or sick 
because it is immature. In the natural order, evils 
come in when the development has been reached, 
and its energies have ceased to act in full force. 
But those who contend that physical and moral 
evils are the necessary attendants of what they call 
imperfect development, reverse the very process 
from which they argue, placing them at the outset 
where they are never found in any other order. 
Plainly, we cannot reason from one to the other ; 
plainly, there is a disturbing element in human 
development, for which no analogy can be found in 
the physical and animal processes. Human ills are 
not the sole products of ignorance, nor the chance 
features of human progress, but the fruit of selfish- 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 161 

ness, — not an order but a perversion. And so Christ 
sets himself as the deliverer from each, the origin 
and the result, the sin at the root, and the misery 
which is its fruitage. Therefore let no man think 
that there is any gospel of deliverance or helpful- 
ness for him, except as it is grounded in a cure of 
whatever evil there may be in him, — evil habits, or 
selfish aims, or a worldly spirit. • 

2. The philosophy of this preaching, for I know 
not how else to name a certain feature of it. 

Suppose some questioner had arisen in that syna- 
gogue of Nazareth and asked Jesus, not as to the 
substance of his preaching, for that was plain 
enough, but what was the ground of it. " You de- 
clare a gospel of deliverance ; on what ultimate fact 
or reason do you rest your declaration ? " A rea- 
sonable question, had there been any to ask it ; there 
are many asking it to-day. I think the answer 
would have been of this sort : " I am making in this 
gospel a revelation of God, showing you his very 
heart, putting Him before you as He is, without any 
paraphernalia of symbol or ritual, translating Him 
into life. This is what God feels for you, this is 
how He loves and pities you, this is what God pro- 
poses to do for you ; to cheer you with good news, 
and open your blind eyes, and free your bruised 
souls and bodies from the captivity of evil." And 
it is God who is to do this, not any human one, no 
trend of society or course of nature, no self-strug- 
gles or self-wrought wisdom, but God uncovered, 

revealed, brought abreast human life, and face to 
11 



162 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 

face wltli every man ; this puts reason into the 
good words. 

When shall we learn it, we of to-day ? Troubles 
enough we all have ; cheerless hearts all around us ; 
blind eyes that see no glory in heaven and no path 
on earth ; captives of lust and appetite and avarice 
and hard-heartedness and sordidness, conscious of 
the bitter captivity. They are all about us ; they 
are here ; perchance we are such ; perchance I am ! 
Do we know how to be healed ? Do we know how 
to get free from these blinding, enslaving, torment- 
ing sins ? There is but one way, and that is by 
somehow getting sight of God, such sight of Him 
that we shall believe in, that is, trust and obey Him ? 
Those words in the Nazareth synagogue were but 
the idlest breath except as they brought the deliv- 
ering God before men. But when God is seen and 
known, the whole nature of man leaps into joyful 
and harmonious activity. Of all words used by 
those about to die, the commonest are these : " He 
is such a God as I want ; " profoundest words of 
faith and philosophy ! The only words in death, the 
best in life ! It is God that we want ! It is such 
a God and so revealed that we need ! Under this 
revelation of Him our troubles shrink, our broken 
hearts are healed, our darkened minds are illumi- 
nated, our sins pass away in tears of shame and re- 
pentance, and our whole being springs up to meet 
Him who made us and made us for Himself ; the 
secret of existence is revealed, the end of destiny 
is achieved ! 

3. The remaining point is the power of this 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 163 

preaching. In one sense its power lay in its sub- 
stance, and in another sense, in the philosophy or 
ground of it, but there was more than came from 
these ; there was the power that resided in Him who 
spoke these truths. 

There is almost no power in words however com- 
fortable in sound, or explicit in meaning ; there is 
almost as little in bare truth. These are not the 
lacks of the world. Words ! have not men spoken 
good words from the beginning ? Truth ! There 
has been no dearth of truth from the first. It is 
written in the heart of man. It cries perpetually 
in the street. It is graven on the heavens and the 
earth ; philosophy has always taught it ; literature 
is crammed with it. There has never been a civ- 
ilization nor an age that was not overarched by 
a knowledge of the fundamental truths of charac- 
ter and duty, never an age without some nearly 
adequate conception of God. But how powerless ! 
How slowly has the world responded to what it 
knows ! How feebly does any man answer to his 
perceptions of right and truth ! The reason is that 
truth has little power until it is transmuted into 
conviction in the mind of some person who utters it 
as conviction. In no other way has truth any force 
than by this alchemy of personal belief. There 
must first be a sight of it, and then a belief in it. 
There is, however, a wide difference or rather gap, 
between the two. The philosophers and religion- 
ists of old saw truth, but they saw it in detached 
forms and not as a system ; they also failed to con- 
nect it with a personal, divine source, and hence 



164 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 

had no ground of inspiration and no sufficient mo- 
tive to duty. In other phrase, they were without 
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Compare, for ex- 
ample, Abraham and Zeno ; the latter had an im- 
measurably wider culture and range of thought, but 
he could not elaborate a vital system. Abraham, 
on the contrary, with his one idea of a spiritual, 
personal God, and his one principle of obedient 
trust, inaugurated an order that instantly became 
vital and endures still as eternal truth. He did not 
look as widely, perhaps not as directly at life, as 
the Stoic, but he looked in truer directions. One 
truth, unless it happens to be an all-embracing 
truth, and no number of truths however clearly 
seen, have any inspiring or redeeming power until 
they are grounded in an eternal Person. Mozley, 
in one of his sermons, asks : " Have we not, in our 
moral nature, a great deal to do with fragments ? " 
Yes, and it is the weakness of human nature when 
it undertakes to teach moral truth that it has only 
fragments to deal with. It is because Christ did 
not see truth in a fragmentary way, and because 
there was in Himself nothing fragmentary, that He 
teaches with power. There is no capability in man 
of resisting perfect truth ; when it is seen, it con- 
quers. The main thing therefore is to see, but men 
love darkness, and even when they begin to see, it 
is in a half-blind way. 

We read that they wondered at his gracious words, 
and that later, at Capernaum, they were aston- 
ished at his teaching, for his word was with author- 
ity or power. Why astonished at his teaching ? It 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 165 

was nothing new ; it was mainly a quotation, but 
He spake it with power, or in a way that com- 
manded assent. But in what lay the commanding 
power? Not in any impressiveness of manner, or 
felicity of presentation. It was something more 
even than sincerity and earnestness of conviction. 
None of these elements reach up to power. The 
impressive and felicitous mariner is often weak. 
One may be very sincere and earnest and yet pro- 
duce no great effect. Elements of power, they do 
not constitute power. The world is full of sincere 
and earnest men, advocating measures, pleading for 
causes, preaching sermons, who make little impres- 
sion and gain no ends. The main reason is that 
they lack scope, their vision is small, they do not 
see their subject in its large relations and bearings. 
They have no measure or comprehension of it, but 
take some feature or incident of it and mistake it for 
the whole. The listeners feel consciously or uncon- 
sciously the lack or the error, and refuse to believe, 
or to be moved. There can be no estimate of the 
mischief often wrought by very good and earnest 
men, who by some fine qualities of zeal and honest 
purpose and fluency, get the attention of the multi- 
tude and preach a gospel shot through with nar- 
rowness and ignorance, tagging to its fundamental 
and unmistakable features some de-spiritualizing and 
cramping notion of a second personal coming of the 
Lord, or the like, and so dragging the whole system 
down to the level of a dead Judaism, opening 
breaches through which the whole faith of the peo- 
ple who first hear them gladly, at last flows out ; 



166 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 

truth swept along with error because they have 
been taught to regard them as identical. There are 
many dangerous teachers in the world, but none 
equals the good man whose ignorance outweighs his 
goodness, the goodness floating the ignorance while 
it does its fatal work. 

The main element of power in one who speaks 
is, an entire, or the largest possible comprehension 
of the subject. One may earnestly declare a truth, 
but if he does not see it, he will not impress it. But 
whenever one sees a truth in all its proportions and 
relations and bearings, sees it with clear, intense, 
absolute vision, he will have power over men how- 
ever he speaks. Here we have the key to the 
power with which Christ preached. We read that 
the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him, He was filled 
with the Spirit, inspired, breathed upon through 
and through by the divine breath. But it was not 
the Spirit that spoke through the Christ, nor was 
the power that of the Spirit. The power was in 
the Christ whose being was set in motion by the 
Spirit. He was not an instrument played upon, a 
divine harp responding to heavenly winds, but an 
actor, a mind that saw, a heart that felt, a will that 
decided, all moving together. He was passive only 
in the freedom with which He gave Himself up to 
be possessed by the Spirit. It was a force behind 
and in his faculties, illuminating and arousing them 
to their fullest action. It is not the light that sees, 
but the eye illuminated by light. Inspiration is a 
mystery and it is not a mystery. It is not a mys- 
tery, in the respect that we know it to be a fact ; 



THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 167 

it is a mystery in the respect that we cannot under- 
stand it. We hear the sound thereof but cannot 
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. It is the 
witness put into humanity that it is kindred with 
God. We know not what it is, but when we feel 
its breath we know that it is the breath of God. 
But the Spirit is not the power of Christ; it is 
rather that which sets in action Christ's own power 
which lay in his absolute comprehension of what He 
said, and in a perfect comprehension of his position. 
He saw the meaning of the Jewish system. He 
knew what the acceptable year of the Lord meant. 
He pierced the old symbolism to the centre and 
drew out its significance. He saw that God was a 
deliverer from first to last, and measured the signifi- 
cance of the fact. He knew that God was the 
Father, and the full force and mighty sweep of that 
name. The whole heart and mind of God were 
open to Him. And because He knew God, He knew 
how God felt and what He would do, and have Him 
do. And so He takes his place as the One who is 
to declare and manifest to the world the absolute 
character and nature of God. This was the power 
of Christ's preaching ; He saw God ; He understood 
God ; He comprehended God ; He knew what God 
had done, and would do ; the whole purpose and 
plan of deliverance and redemption lay before Him 
as an open page. 

We cannot measure this knowledge of the Christ ; 
we can but faintly conceive of it. But the measure 
of our conception of it, is the measure of our spir- 
itual power over others. We speak, we teach, we 



168 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 

live with power just in the degree in which we have 
got sight of God in the revealing Christ and through 
Him of the purpose and plan that underlie these 
mysteries that we call life and time. 



LAND TENURE. 



"ITie people forming the nation exists in its physical unity and cif' 
cumstance, in a necessary relation to the land." 

" The possession of the land by the people is the condition of its his" 
torical life." 

"The right to the land is in the people, and the land is given to the 
people in the fulfillment of a moral order obl the earth." — Mulford, 
The Nation, Chap. V. 

" The land is the essential condition of the normal and moral develop- 
ment of the state, and therefore it is absolutely holy and inalienable. 
It is here that the real moral spirit of the love of the father-land rests ; 
originally it is a love of one's native land, and always retains this nat- 
ural element, but in its completeness it is wholly interpenetrated with 
this consciousness of a moral relation." — Rothe, quoted in The Nation, 
page 71. 

*' The generous feeling pure and warm, 

"Which owns the right of all divine, 

The pitying heart, the helping arm. 

The prompt self-sacrifice are thine. 

Beneath thy broad, impartial eye. 

How fade the lines of caste and birth ! 

How equal in their misery lie 

The groaning multitudes of e*j:th." — Whittier. 



LAND TENURE. 



" And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty through- 
out all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee 
unto you ; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye 
shall return every man unto his family." — Leviticus xxv. 10-13. 

All men ultimately get their living out of the 
soil. There seems to be a recognition of this in 
that inexhaustible storehouse of fundamental truths, 
— the first chapters of Genesis. Man is placed in a 
garden to till it and to eat its fruits. He has no 
other way of living, and will never have any other. 
There never will be a process by which the original 
elements that enter into food will be manufactured 
into food. We may fly in the air, or travel around 
the earth with the sun, but we shall never take the 
unorganized substances that form grass and grain 
and the flesh of animals, and directly convert them 
into food ; they must first be organized into vital 
forms. There seems to be in this process a hint 
of the eternal truth that life proceeds only from 
life. 

Hence, questions pertaining to land are the most 
imperative that come before men, because the first 
and most constant question with every man is. 
How shall I live, how get my daily bread ? All 
other questions pertaining to life or condition come 



172 LAND TENURE. 

after tMs one. He may be free or enslaved, he 
may live in a city or on the sea, he may be edu- 
cated or left ignorant, but first of all he must have 
food, and food, first or last, comes out of the ground. 
Every human being must have some real relation 
to a certain extent of soil. The relation may be 
an indirect one; he may never see his estate, he 
may live in a city and not know the grain that 
yields his loaf, but somewhere there is a certain 
stretch of land that stands for that man's life. Fif- 
teen square feet, it is said, will furnish a Hawaiian 
enough to support existence; the Indian requires 
miles of hunting ground ; the Belgian farmer lives 
well on two or three acres ; here in New ^England 
we require many. But the main point is the im- 
perativeness of the relation. Commerce, manufac- 
tures, schools, churches, government even, all these 
represent no such necessity as an open relation to 
the soil. You may burn all the ships, factories, 
churches, school- houses, annihilate government, and 
man still lives, but cut him off from the soil, and 
in a week he is dead. 

I say this to explain the force of land questions, 
their interest to thinking minds, their place in his- 
tory, and in political and divine economy, which, 
however, are one thing. To get man rightly re- 
lated to the soil, in such a way that he shall most 
easily get his food from it, this is the underlying 
question of all history, its keynote and largest 
achievement. The chief struggles in all ages and 
nations have turned upon this relation. For a hun- 
dred years Roman history was colored by struggles 



LAND TENURE. 173 

over the agrarian laws, tlie patricians claiming the 
lands of Italy for their own, the people and the 
great conquerors claiming them for themselves and 
the disbanded armies ; these struggles were the 
basis of Caesar's fortunes. It was the apportion- 
ment of the lands of England by William the Con- 
queror to his followers, that laid the foundation of 
those conflicts between the nobility or land-owners 
and the people, that have never ceased, and that 
are to-day at white heat ; questions in which there 
is technical justice on one side and eternal right- 
eousness on the other. Why should not the Duke 
of Buccleugh own land over which he can ride 
thirty miles in a straight line, with a title good 
for nigh a thousand years ? Why, again, should 
one man hold land from which thousands of peo- 
ple, on or near it, who are well-nigh starving, 
could get their bread ? I do not attempt to answer 
these questions, because they are complicated and 
do not admit of brief answer, but the recent land- 
act of Mr. Gladstone shows how a great, philo- 
sophical statesman regards them, " marshaling the 
way they are going." The Code of Napoleon, which 
took the great estates of France, and even all landed 
possessions, and made them subject to division on 
inheritance, showed the same broad sense of human 
justice, with perhaps some lack of forecast. 

There are two forces at work in the matter, both 
proceeding out of what seems almost an instinct for 
ownership of the soil. The earth is our mother, 
and she woos us perpetually to herself. To own 
some spot of land, and be able to say, "this is 



174 LAND TENUEE. 

mine," is one of the sweetest of personal feelings ; 
it declares our kinship with this natural world that 
nurses our life and upholds our feet. There is a 
sort of pathos always felt when one speaks of own- 
ing a burial lot, — a slight, tender satisfaction, as if 
it were fit that one should himself own the spot of 
earth where his earth-fed body is to be resolved 
into the elements. And thus it was that Abraham, 
though he was to have no country here, but only a 
heavenly one, still was suffered to call his own the 
cave where he buried his dead ; so dear and natural 
a satisfaction was not to be withheld. 

These two forces that draw men to the soil are, 
first, a natural, almost instinctive sense of keeping 
close to the source of life, as a wise general does 
not allow himself to be separated from his supplies. 
This is broad, every- day, common-sense. When a 
people are shut off from the soil, or denied owner- 
ship of it ; when it is held by a few and farmed out 
even at low rents ; when land is held in such a 
way that it no longer answers its end of feeding the 
people, but is kept for parks and forests and hunt- 
ing grounds, there will be restiveness, complaint, 
and resistance, coupled with a defective life of the 
nation and of the family. Back of all claims of 
inheritance, above all laws, and deeper down than 
technical justice, is the ineradicable conviction that 
the soil is for the people simply because they live 
out of the soil ; and it is a simple corollary that the 
living should be as easily got, and as generous as 
possible. The main reason why we have an annual 
immigration of over a quarter of a million from 



LAND TENURE. 175 

Europe is that land can be owned here, while there 
it can only be rented. And this emigration is the 
reason why Europe is saved from agrarian revolu* 
tions, and the few are left in possession of the land. 
The injustice of ages lingers because there is an 
outlet for human indignation. 

The other force is the pride and greed and love 
of power of the strong. Here is a triple-woven 
force out of which has sprung by far the greater 
part of the injustice and oppression that have 
afflicted the race. There is no pride so natural 
and persistent as pride in extensive ownership of 
land. It is figured in the temptation of the Christ, 
to whom was shown all the kingdoms of the earth. 
To climb a hill or tower, and say, "I own all I 
see," — this is merely the topmost reach of self- 
satisfaction. It is simply the broadest possible re- 
flection to the man of his own importance. To 
own the earth, — that which feeds man and up- 
holds him, that which endures while the genera- 
tions flit across its surface, that whereon is wrought 
the perpetual mystery of growth, the arena of the un- 
failing goodness, the promise-covered and promise- 
keeping earth, — this is the most philosophic and 
well-nigh noblest form of human pride. It is in- 
nocent when it does not invade the just rights of 
others; when it does not forget that the earth is 
the common property of humanity, on the simple 
ground that it is necessary to its life.^ But, in- 

1 I hardly need say that I do not here intimate any theory of Com- 
munism, or of arbitrary distribution of the soil, nor even in what the 
Tight consists by which any man holds a particular portion of land. I 



176 LAND TENURE. 

stead, nearly the whole world is subject to the en* 
croachments of this pride. And greed joins hands 
with pride. There is no form of wealth so per- 
manent, because the earth endures forever ; so un- 
fluctuating, because based on the sure order of 
nature ; so steady in its revenues, because drawn 
from the imperative demands of daily need. Hence 
the rich invest in lands. There is hardly a heavy 
capitalist in the country who is not a large land- 
owner at the West ; and these lands, lying unused 
in the track of advancing populations, become the 
cause of the high cost of farms bought by the poor. 
A Boston or New York capitalist early secures some 
thousands of acres; the poor emigrants push be- 
yond, settle the country, and thereby advance the 
value of the tract many fold, — a shrewd and tech- 
nically just operation, but essentially mean and eter- 
nally unjust. 

And to pride and greed is added the love of 
power. The possession of the soil is the surest 
exponent and standing-ground of worldly force. 
Everything else may fail: the hearts of men, coined 
treasures, ships and houses, bonds and promises 
to pay, but so long as society keeps a man in 
the possession of land he is so far forth strong ; 
he has a place to stand in, the fortifications built by 
nature, and the arms and defenses that spring per- 
petually out of the earth ; he realizes the fable of 
Antaeus. 

am only speaking of a more general and primitive principle, namely, a 
close and direct relation of the people to the soil, — a stumbling-block in 
all histor}', — a relation yet to be realized in the larger part of th« 
world. 



LAND TENURE. 177 

It is through these impelling forces, the govern- 
ing ones in human nature, that the land has com- 
monly been lield by a few rich and strong, while 
the great mass of mankind have lived upon it at 
second-hand, shut out from large portions, enslaved, 
serfs, payers of rents with no chance of purchase, 
suffered simply to draw from it their necessary 
bread, the profits of their toil passing to owners 
whose ancestors stole the land ; — such, and worse, 
is the history of man's relation to the soil. In all 
ages, and in the immense majority of cases, the 
relation has been characterized by deep and cruel 
injustice. It is the chief field of that dark word 
and fact — oppression. The main oppression in the 
world has been a denial of man's natural rights in 
the soil. 

There has been almost nothing of it in this coun- 
try, except at the South, where the cycle of wrong 
and its retribution has been completed. Whenever 
it has taken form, — as in the State of New York, 
in the middle of the century, — it has met with 
summary repulse. In California, the evil of vast 
estates, not to be bought or cultivated, was be- 
coming real, when recently the State enacted a new 
constitution, chiefly to secure a different system of 
taxation, under which these vast estates are crum- 
bling into small farms, at purchasable prices. Happy 
nation, where every man who will, may sit under his 
own vine and fig tree ! Not so is it with any other, 
and never before was it so in all the world, unless 
we except that little nation called Judea, the only 
nation that, at the outset, anticipated the inevitable 

12 



178 LAND TENURE. 

evils of land-monopoly, and provided against them. 
All other nations have swept blindly into these 
evils, to emerge only after long ages of struggle and 
bloodshed. 

The remarkable feature of the Jewish Common- 
wealth is its anticipatory legislation against prob- 
able, and otherwise certain abuses. The struggles 
of other nations, and the skill of statesmanship, 
have been to correct abuses ; in the Jewish Com- 
monwealth they were foreseen and provided against. 

There are no words to express the wonder felt by 
the student of social science as he first measures 
the significance of that feature of the Jewish state 
known as the year of jubilee. It is little under- 
stood, hidden away in an uninteresting book, stated 
in ancient and blind phraseology, a thing of long 
past ages, nevertheless it remains the most exalted 
piece of statesmanship the world has known, — an 
example of social sagacity, and broad, far-reaching 
wisdom, such as we look for in vain in the annals of 
any other nation. 

It is a singular fact that the enslaved of the col- 
ored race are the only class that seem ever to have 
measured the significance of the year of jubilee. 
It had a meaning and a hope for them that they 
drew out of these old Levitical scriptures, and wove 
into their songs and prayers and preaching and 
every-day speech; and at last their day of jubilee 
came ! It was also understood by one of the other 
race : John Brown, — a Jewish prophet in the whole 
temper of his mind, a man who traversed a line of 
thought and action far above the level of technical 



LAND TENURE. 179 

justice and constitutional law, — found in this an- 
cient law of Moses the inspiration that made him 
the defender of Kansas against the slave power and a 
willing martyr at Harper's Ferry. He had a favor- 
ite hymn, Charles Wesley's " Blow ye the trumpet, 
blow ! " The poet saw in the year of jubilee a 
spiritual deliverance from sin, its ultimate and high- 
est significance indeed, but this political iconoclast 
saw it in its direct and simple meaning as a deliver- 
ance from slavery, — the first and only man in the 
modern world who ever drew upon it for practical 
purposes. 

A few words will give us the salient features of 
the institution, when we shall see the application of 
all that has been said. 

The Jewish Theocracy had for one of its main 
features a system of Sabbaths curiously and pro- 
foundly arranged for the interpenetration of divine 
and political principles. The Sabbath was not as 
it is with us, a spiritual thing, but was both polit- 
ical and moral, yet so finely were the two features 
welded that they are inseparable. The Sabbath 
was thus made an assertion that life is of one piece, 
and that God is over and in all life. Every half- 
century, presumably the natural period of human 
life, formed a grand Sabbatical circle ; first the 
seventh-day Sabbath, then the seventh Sabbatical 
month in each year, then the Sabbatical seventh 
year. When seven of these have been observed, 
there is ushered in a year of remarkable provisions, 
known as the year of jubilee. The weekly Sab- 
bath was for the physical and spiritual rest of the 



180 LAND TENURE. 

individual ; the seventli Sabbatical month is also 
for the individual, but it has a wider social signifi- 
cance, takes in the nation and winds up with the 
chief religious act of the nation, — the fast and sacri- 
fice of atonement. The seventh Sabbatical year 
has an agricultural and political significance. The 
ignorance of later periods and the delayed wisdom 
of modern science are anticipated ; the soil is to lie 
fallow one year in seven for recuperation. To-day 
the agricultural journal is urging upon farmers this 
bit of ancient wisdom. On this seventh year all 
debts were remitted, a custom retained even to the 
exact time by the laws of many States, notes out- 
lawing at the end of seven years, and accounts at 
even a shorter period. The purpose was both pru- 
dential and merciful. It led to snugness in busi- 
ness, it avoided entanglements that outweigh mem- 
ory and so render testimony difficult, it put a limit 
about the power of the presumably strong over the 
presumably weak and unfortunate, yet had no qual- 
ity of injustice, as all transactions were based on a 
full understanding of it. It simply prevented a 
compounding of interest, a process fatal at last to 
both parties. But all this is moral as well as eco- 
nomic. It was a perpetual lesson in thrift, in care- 
fulness, in forbearance and mercy; it was a contin- 
ual rebuke to the hardness of avarice; it assured 
the poor and the unfortunate that by a divine law, 
his burden would be taken off. It constantly fed 
hope by giving every man a fresh start, not daily 
or yearly, which would be demoralizing, nor at the 
end of some remote and undefined period, which 



LAND TENURE. 181 

would be disheartening, but once in seven }ears, a 
period long enough to enforce the lesson of mistake 
but not long enough to crush the spirit. 

A cycle of seven years also measured the limit of 
the bondage of any Hebrew slave, though not syn- 
chronizing with the seventh-year Sabbath. Humanly 
speaking, slavery could not be kept out of the He- 
brew Commonwealth ; it "was too early in the history 
of the world. But it was hedged about by stren- 
uous laws all merciful in character, and of such a 
nature in their operation that slave holding became 
unprofitable, and the system died out. Moses was 
wiser than this nineteenth-century nation of ours ! 
He sapped the life-blood of the institution by wise 
statesmanship ; we drowned it in a sea of blood and 
fire, — blood from a million hearts, fire that touched 
the hearts of forty millions. 

But the fiftieth year, or year of jubilee, has a 
wider scope. It covers this prime question of land- 
tenure. It settled at the outset the problem that 
no other people ever solved except through ages of 
struggle and revolution. 

The Hebrew nation existed under the conscious- 
ness of a covenant with Jehovah. It would be a 
petty criticism that pried into the origin of this be- 
lief, moved by contempt at the seeming presumption 
of this little nation of fugitive slaves, — petty and 
narrow indeed ! It were wiser and more scientific 
to regard every nation as under covenant with God, 
if it but had the wisdom to know it. That this na- 
tion discerned the eternal fact, and wrought it into 
the foundations of their State, only shows its insight 



182 LAND TENURE. 

into the nature of the State, and its receptivity of 
inspired truth. Moses was no partialist, no con- 
ceited dreamer that Israel was a favorite of heaven.^ 
This was but the poetic gloss put on the national 
career by the poet-prophets of a later age. He 
doubtless knew that every nation exists under cov- 
enant with God, exists in God and for God, and 
that this relation constitutes a covenant. In the 
same way, every man has a covenant with God ; 
and this necessary relation, made up of promises 
and laws on one side and obligations on the other 
side, is the peculiar glory and hope of every life. 
But this covenant, whether with a nation or an in- 
dividual, takes on special forms according to cir- 
cumstances. It is in the covenant of God with this 
nation of ours to give us the continent, and to keep 
it forever, if it continues free and just. It is in the 
covenant of God with every man to grant him a 
certain, special success and reward if he keeps 
God's commandmentso So when these Hebrews 
were on the way to Palestine there was elaborated 
for them, or inspired within them, a belief that God 
had given them this land. They drew on the tradi- 
tions of their race and called it a promised land. 
They held the hope of possessing it from God, and 
so it was a covenant possession. This is not super- 
stition nor conceit, but truth so large that we can 
hardly take it in. It were better to train ourselves 

1 I am not unmindful of the criticism as to the authorship and date oi 
the Pentateuch now in progress ; but will merely say that the point now 
under consideration bears internal and unanswerable proof of dating 
from the Conquest of Canaan ; it could not, from its very nature, hav« 
triginated at a later period. 



LAND TENURE. 183 

towards a' comprehension of it than look down upon 
it as a narrowness. But this promised land was for 
the nation, for all and each one ; not for the heads 
of the tribes, not for the successful warriors, not for 
the strong, or rich, or high-born, if such there were. 
When the promised land was reached and secured 
there was allotted to every family a tract of land, 
a sort of universal homestead act. Recognizing the 
fact that man's ultimate dependence is upon the soil, 
the purpose is to keep the whole body of the people as 
near it as possible, and to prevent dispossession from 
it. They are not forbidden to sell it ; such a re- 
quirement would have taken all freedom and elas- 
ticity out of practical affairs, it would have made 
men the creatures of formal rules instead of leaving 
them to the educating influence of commercial 
transactions. Inalienable estates make a man at the 
same time weak and too strong : weak because he 
has no call to preserve his own, and too strong be- 
cause he has resources without corresponding char- 
acter; he will be over- confident, willful and pre- 
sumptuous. 

But on the other hand, these Jewish estates could 
not be permanently alienated. Once in fifty years 
all land, that had been sold, reverted to the family 
to which it had been allotted :" every man re- 
turned to his possessions." 

It does not lessen the wisdom of this legislation 
that it probably did not meet the exigencies of the 
later development of the nation, nor even that its 
details may have become a hindrance in the more 
complex state of society that followed the Captivity, 



184 LAND TENURE. 

when it probably ceased to be enforced. Its wis- 
dom is to be found in its preyisionary features, in 
its reversal of ordinary history, that is, it planted 
the nation on equal rights at the outset instead of 
leaving them to be achieved by struggle, and in its 
assertion of the general principle that it is wise to 
keep the body of the people as near the source of 
their subsistence as possible. It was not given up 
until it had educated and grounded the nation in 
those conceptions of practical righteousness that are 
found in the pages of the prophets, through whom 
they have become the inspiration of the world. 

Its design and effect are evident. It was a bar 
to monopoly of the land. All greed and pride in 
this direction were limited. One might add field 
to field for a series of years, but after a time the 
process ceased and the lands went back to their 
original owners. The purpose was to make such a 
habit unprofitable, to keep the resources of society 
evenly distributed, to prevent the rich from becom- 
ing too rich and the poor hopelessly poor, to undo 
misfortune, to give those who had erred through 
sloth or improvidence an opportunity to improve 
the lessons of poverty, to prevent children from 
reaping the faults of their parents ; one generation 
might squander its portion but the next was not 
forced to inherit the consequences. Thus once in 
fifty years society was rehabilitated. It was a per- 
petual lesson in hope and encouragement. It took 
off accumulated burdens. It put limits about the 
cruelty of man to man. It was a constant assertion 
of equality. It fostered patriotism, a virtue that 



LAND TENURE. 185 

thrives best on the soil. It kept alive in every man 
a sense of ownership of his country. It was, prima- 
rily perhaps, an inwrought education of the family, 
fostering a sense of its dignity, and guarding the 
sanctity of marriage and legitimacy of birth. All 
these influences and ends drew their efficacy, not 
from their formal perfection, but from the fact that 
they sprang out of a divine requirement, and were 
the expressions of a' moral order that rested on God. 

Such are some of the main features of this unique 
law. There are minor features that it is not neces- 
sary to speak of, details appropriate to its proper 
execution. For example, the fields lying fallow 
was necessarily incidental to a transfer of them. 
It also directed the attention of the restored owners 
to other forms of labor, such as the repair of houses 
and the like, that were needful. Thus we see how 
the seemingly trivial or superstitious features pass 
away under examination, and resolve into practical 
wisdom. 

Though a political measure, it is informed with 
spiritual significance. It is throughout instinct 
with mercy. It taught humanity. It rebuked and 
repressed the great sins. It was in keeping with 
the underlying fact of the national history which 
was deliverance, and, as well, with the central idea 
of the world, which is redemption, — redemption 
from evil however caused and of whatever kind. 
It was an assertion of perpetual hope, — hope which, 
though long delayed, comes at last to all, and every 
man returns to the possessions his Creator gave 
Mm. It was in its profoundest meaning, a prophecy 



186 LAND TENURE. 

wrought into the practical economy of a nation. 
It shadows forth the recovery from evil, the un- 
doing of all burdens that weigh down humanity, the 
eternal inheritance awaiting God's children when 
his cycle is complete. And so the Christ, when, on 
the day of atonement, he stood up in the synagogue 
of Nazareth to read, opened the book where it was 
written : — 

" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
Because He anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor ; 
He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, 
And recovering of sight to the blind, 
To set at liberty them that are bruised, 
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 

And the eyes of all were fastened on Him as He 
said : " To-day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in 
your ears." The acceptable year of the Lord was 
this year of jubilee. Christ stood upon this great, 
sabbatical idea of the Jewish system, not upon the 
sacrificial and ceremonial idea, but upon this far 
loftier one of rest and deliverance, — rest in God, 
and deliverance by God from all the evil of the 
world.^ He made universal what had been partic- 
ular, general what had been restricted. He ushered 
in an age of jubilee, a restoration not to be undone, 
a deliverance never to lapse into captivity. 

1 The true relation of Christ to the Sabbath is to be found here, rather 
than in his chance allusions to it in his conflicts with the Pharisees, in 
which necessarily there was something of antagonism to it as a Pharisaic 
custom. Christ discerned the fact that the entire Jewish life, individual 
and national, was Sabbatical, — there was no time that was not a Sab- 
bath; i. e., the nation was grounded on and immersed in rest and de- 
Uverance. The question remaining for us to-day is, Shall we have a 
sign of these eternal facts and processes ? Shall we have a Sabbath or 
notV I have never seen any elaboration of this view, namely^ that 
Christ planted Himself upon the sabbatical, and not on the ceremonial 
Sdea. 



LAND TENURE. 187 

This ancient piece of statesmanship is full of 
pointed lessons for these modern times. It cannot 
be reproduced in form, but it still teaches the ever 
necessary lesson, that nations and corporations and 
individuals are always forgetting that the world 
belongs to all men by the gift of God. It teaches 
the wisdom of showing mercy to the poor and un- 
fortunate, and the unwisdom of permitting endless 
monopolies and limitless increase of wealth. It is 
the business of the State to see that these things 
are restricted, as both right and safe, as necessary 
for the rich as for the poor. The methods em- 
ployed may sometimes seem to lack in technical 
justice, but there is a righteousness that lies back 
of formal justice. As the world goes, the forms of 
justice are apt to become the instruments of oppress 
sion in the hands of the avaricious, the proud, and 
the strong. These three always lie in wait to op- 
press the poor, the humble, and the weak ; and their 
choicest instruments are those legal forms and insti- 
tutions that are necessary to society. But they 
have their limits by a law which is above all such 
laws and formal institutions. When wealth op- 
presses the poor, or keeps them at the mere living 
point, when monopolies tax the people, whenever a 
few own the soil, however legal the form of pos* 
session, when there is any process going on by 
which the rich are growing richer and the poor 
poorer, there is a divine justice above all formal 
justice, that steps in and declares that such pro- 
cesses must stop. 

Shakespeare saw this, as he aaw so many things 



188 LAND TENURE. 

that underlie social righteousness ; Shylock was 
legally entitled to his pound of flesh, but there was 
a law of mercy that overruled technical justice, and 
Portia resorts to technical quibbles to save the un- 
fortunate Antonio, only because the avaricious Jew 
would not heed this law of mercy. The dram- 
atist thus sets forth the fact, that if the law of 
mercy is not fulfilled, other means will he used to 
the same end. Moses put these means into the con- 
stitution of the State. The Jewish theocracy was 
imbedded in mercy ; its forms down to the minutest 
detail were instinct with the finest spirit of justice 
and equality, and tenderest regard for the poor and 
unfortunate. It reversed human history, beginning 
at the goal to which other nations are tending. 
Still, it is not exempt from the process of develop- 
ment, but the development pertains to the form ; 
the spirit underlying the developing form is in 
keeping with the absolute perfection of God, and is 
the attestation of his presence in the forms. 

There is a wisdom in laws that hedge about the 
courses of the avaricious and the strong, even at 
the expense of technical justice. For when the op- 
pressions of the rich and the powerful and the for- 
tunate reach a certain point, the oppressed multi- 
tudes turn like hunted beasts at bay, and destroy 
both their oppressors and the social fabric. 

These dangers are never far off from any people. 
They have their seeds in human nature. We have 
once tasted their bitterest fruit, we may taste it 
9,gain. 

Three dangers confront us that we do not yet 



LAND TENURE. 189 

mucli heed, but which are sure to take shape when 
the outlet now found in new land is closed, and the 
forces of society are shut up to themselves : the 
growth of monopolies, the antagonistic organization 
of capital and labor, and legislation in the interest 
of wealth. They can be met and averted only by 
a recognition of the fact that the nation is a moral 
order, and endures only through a realization of 
practical righteousness. 



MOEAL ElSTIEOlSnMENT. 



" Though it is true that we cannot make ourselves feel at the time by 
iin act of the will, acts of the will do eventually, not create feeling, in- 
deed, for feeling is a divine gift, but elicit it and bring it into play by 
removing the obstructions to it. The formation of habits by acts of the 
will against inclination is indeed the working of the law by which the 
mind is prepared for a higher state, in which feeling, and inclination 
itself moves it to good." — Mozley, University Sermons, page 152. 

"The problems to be solved in the study of human life and character 
are these : Given the character of a man and the conditions of life around 
him, what will be his career? Or, given his character and career, of 
what kind were his surroundings ? The relation of these three factors 
to each other is severely logical. From them is deduced all genuine 
history. Character is the chief element; for it is both a result and a 
cause, — a result of influences and a cause of results."— President 
Garfield, Memorial Address on Gen. Thomas. 

*'He fixed thee mid this dance 
Of plastic circumstance, 

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest j 
Machinery just meant 
To give thy soul its bent, 
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed." 

Robert Browning, Rahbi Ben Exra. 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 



"Wherefore, mj'- beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, al- 
ways abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that 
your labor is not in vain in the Lord." — 1 Corinthians xv. 58. 

Is it for this that St. Paul has led us through his 
mighty argument, to confirm us in the homely duty 
of steadfastness ? Is it for this only, mere every- 
day fidelity, that he has taken us along this grandest 
highway of thought, compassing the whole history 
of humanity, spanning the gulf of death, and tra- 
cing human destiny till it is lost in the ecstasy of 
final victory and eternal life? One would think 
that having lifted us to such heights, he would leave 
us there to bask in the eternal sunshine and drink 
the joy of the victory over death. It seems an anti- 
climax in thought and style, that after the mighty 
themes brought before us, — the sway of death 
from Adam to Christ, the resurrection from the 
dead set forth by analogies drawn from heaven and 
earth, the mystery of the spiritual nature and the 
deeper mystery of the image it shall bear, — ■ it 
seems out of keeping that we should be called upon 
to fold the wings upon which we have followed him 
in his inspired flight, and drop back into the mere 
ploddings of every-day duties. Whether it seems 
an anti-climax or not, depends upon one's concept 

13 



194 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

tion of what is high and low. A mere rhetorician 
would not have dared to add anything after the 
sublime assertion of the victory over death and the 
grave. A sentimentalist would have said : " there 
can be nothing higher or better than such a frame ; 
here let us abide." But St. Paul, being no mere 
rhetorician and nothing whatever of a sentimental- 
ist, saw that there was something higher than vic- 
tory over death, something more essential than 
comfort in the revelation of destiny ; and so he leads 
us on to what he conceives to be highest and best. 
It is an interesting disclosure of the underlying 
traits of his mind that is made by the purpose lying 
back of, and running through, this chapter. His 
aim is not to enlarge our knowledge of the future, 
not to reveal our destiny, not to vcomfort mourners, 
not to take away the fear of death ; all these ends 
are gained, but they are not the primary ends before 
him. He sets this matter of resurrection from the 
dead right in the minds of the Corinthians because 
false views of it were injuring and perverting the 
service they were to render. So long as they be- 
lieved that resurrection meant some spiritual trans- 
formation already past, they were incapable of true 
service ; their hope was behind them, their inspira- 
tion was a spent force, there was no sufficient mo- 
tive for thorough fidelity ; for in morals the motive 
is always ahead. They had dropped a definite and 
inspiring hope and taken up in its stead some fan^ 
tastic notion that resurrection from the dead meant 
simply an awakening of their spiritual nature, type 
of mistake made now as well as then, and followed 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 195 

by loss as great. Such are they who deny all valid- 
ity of fact to gospel narrative, and shrink all the 
objective revelations of God into the interplay of 
their own emotions. Take definiteness and out- 
ward reality away from the Faith, and there will be 
no more strong, definite service, but instead endless 
and useless introspection upon the mysteries of our 
nature, the rehearsal of which comes to be regarded 
as the fulfillment of all righteousness, — a very 
tiresome thing, and so dropped, or exchanged for 
the startling assertions of atheism ; for between 
a God revealed and atheism there is no resting- 
place. St. Paul is careful that they of his day 
shall fall into no such mistake ; hence these words 
that sound like the trump of doom, awakening 
echoes in the under-world, and calling in the courses 
of the stars to aid him in his saving work. His 
single aim is to keep men from lapsing out of a true 
and rational service to God. Service ! service that 
is steadfast, that flows out of unmovable convictions, 
that always abounds in work, that is kept to its 
standard by the most inspiring of hopes, that is con- 
fident of success, knowing it is not in vain in 
the Lord because he is the Lord of an actual resur- 
rection. Such is the height to which he leads us, 
beyond which there was, in his mind, nothing higher, 
as there can be nothing higher in the mind of any 
one who rightly measures human life. For service 
unites in a practical form the two highest qualities 
or forces of our nature, — love and fidelity ; one cov- 
ering our emotional, the other our moral faculties ; 
one fixing us in the eternal order of human sympa< 



196 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

thy and oneness, the other turning it to practical 
ends and holding it steady to its work. 

Thus service becomes the height and sum of hu- 
ihan duty. Servants exalted into friends ; servants 
understanding the glory of their calling and also 
the secret of blessedness ; servants in the one work 
of doing good in an " evil world ; " such is the name 
and the vocation of all who are born into the world. 
Its finest characteristic is steadfastness, the holding 
on quality, persisting, not by mere force of will, but 
by sympathy with, and faith in, the end to be 
reached. 

This steadfastness requires first of all, that one 
should be steadfast in his own moral condition; 
and of this point we will now speak. 

As it is the finest feature of service, so it is the 
one we are most apt to fail of. Alternations of 
feeling that find their way into conduct, lapsing 
away from purposes, the fading out of clear percep- 
tions of truth, the slothful neglect of plain duty ; 
here is the fault of us all. But there are reasons 
for it that it is well to understand. 

1. The high standard of requirement makes it 
hard of attainment. This is one of the features of 
Christian service that tends to throw it out of gen- 
eral acceptance ; in one way or another men are 
always trying to escape claims that are otherwise 
so attractive. Ask anything of me, but do not ask 
me to be perfect ; take much from me but do not 
require all ; leave me some little space where I may 
be my own master and hold something as my own : 
BO men have ever said, not discerning that a perfect 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 197 

standard is both a necessity and a blessing. Thus 
only can God declare his perfect will ; thus only is 
highest effort evoked ; thus only do we learn the 
perfectibility of character, one of the unique fea- 
tures of the Faith ; thus only is the divine element 
within us summoned to its fellowship with the 
Spirit. But while the high standard awakens en- 
thusiasm, it also begets discouragement ; we are 
like men climbing some tall peak, who draw strength 
from its very height, and start afresh as they see 
the glory of the light that plays about the distant 
summit, but are also wearied by the same condi- 
tions. The greatness that inspires also weakens ; 
the perfection that stimulates our finer qualities 
presses heavily on our weaker ones. We hold our 
lives under this two-fold condition of perfect re- 
quirement and human weakness, and the result is 
an experience sharing in the qualities of each. But 
it is better that there should be fluctuation under 
high requirement than uniformity under low re- 
quirement. For the kingdom of Heaven aims only 
at the best ; it does not concern itself with what is 
inferior ; it is gauged throughout upon the scale of 
the perfect and the infinite. 

The struggle of the ages, the inmost purpose of 
human development, is to bring men up to the 
point of enduring the highest motives. It is one 
of the unique features of the Christ, — a sinless man 
demanding sinlessness, ending the preparatory stage 
of inferior requirement, and of winking at the hard- 
ness of the human heart, and launching upon the 
world the utterly new conception and demand o^ 



198 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

perfection. Yet He makes it in no bare way, but 
with a corresponding disclosure of motives and with 
gracious provision in case of failure. In a moment, 
and for the first time, the world of eternity is 
thrown wide open, the absolute nature of God is 
revealed, the assertion of perfectibility and the de- 
mand for it laid upon men, destiny lifted out of 
time into the timeless ranges of eternity ; and along 
with these overwhelming revelations, enough in- 
deed, it would seem, to crush the human spirit, a 
redeeming revelation of grace and pity and patience 
and inspiring aid. Such is the miracle in the world 
of thought and history that Christ presents ! Such 
is the absolutely new conception and method that 
He inserts into society for its adoption, a method 
that combines infinite stringency of requirement, 
with provisions that render them effective in every 
weakest child of humanity. 

2. Steadfastness finds another hindrance in the 
stronger power of the world, stronger because 
nearer and always present. We have only to put 
out our hands and we feel it ; our eyes always be- 
hold it J its voices fill our ears ; it is built into the 
structure of our bodies ; our flesh is wrought out of 
its dust ; our nerves vibrate in unison with its elec- 
tric pulsations ; our blood is red and vital with the 
nourishment drawn from its bosom. It is but a 
short road between our bodily desires and their ful- 
fillment ; it is not a long road between worldly 
desire of any sort and its gratification. It is all 
before us, near at hand, unmistakable, very real 
and substantial. It is not strange, that when the 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 199 

claims of this world conflict with those of the eter- 
nal world, the former should often win us. For 
the eternal world, though near, is not visible, nor 
has it a voice always to be heard amidst the clamor 
of this world. Its tones are low, its movements are 
fine and delicate like the touch of spirits, its re- 
wards and satisfactions are parts of a wide-circling 
system, the full force and results of which we do 
not yet experience. Now, it is almost a law of our 
nature that the nearest motive governs us. That 
it is not wholly a law is the foundation of religion. 
That we can reject the nearer motive, and yield to 
the remoter or higher one, is the basis of spiritual 
life. The use of this possibility of our nature con- 
stitutes character in its higher ranges. 

With such hindrances as these, it becomes a vital 
question how to fortify ourselves in a steadfast habit 
of spiritual life. For fluctuation is weakness and 
misery; the heart as well as the judgment protests 
against this serving two masters. There is no peace 
nor strength nor success save in steadiness and unity 
of purpose. How to gain it is the question. 

It is evident that the first and main thing to do 
is to set the whole current and habit of life against 
these temptations. We must cherish the enthusiasm 
of the high standard ; we must resist the nearer 
motive, and hold the two worlds of sense and spirit 
in their right relation ; we must recognize the fact 
of human weakness, and treat it accordingly, bring- 
ing up fresh reserves of will to fill the place of 
drooping purposes, inducing higher moods that shall 
lift us out of the lower. All this is very evident^ 



200 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

but is it not possible to come into some condition, 
some moral fortress, that shall be in itself fortified 
against this tormenting fluctuation ? Mere acts of 
the will, the proddings of conscience, the enthusi- 
asms of the spirit do not avail ; the fault is in the 
will itself, in the conscience, and the flesh-encased 
spirit. Something is needed to steady the will, to 
supply the place of an intermitting conscience, to 
take up the irregularities of the emotions; some- 
thing to keep the moral machinery in action, when 
will and conscience and emotion flag or cease to 
act. 

We are driven to that old-fashioned thing called 
habit, which I shall now speak of under the modern 
phrase of environment. 

It is a point greatly overlooked just at present, 
that faith needs an environment. Because faith is 
spiritual in its essence, we are too ready to con- 
clude that it is spiritual in its substance ; that 
because it is inward and invisible, it has no need 
of an external and visible form. So it is left un- 
housed, — a spirit without body, a tartarian ghost 
in this very concrete world. 

It is a practical as well as curious question as to 
the relation of character to the external world. Is 
character the result of inward forces, — using the 
world simply as a field of action, a mere standing 
ground, — or does it actually draw upon external 
forces ? Does all come from within, or is there an 
interplay of forces upon the moral nature from both 
worlds ? Does environment contribute to character? 
It is a strange feature of an age that deems itself 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 201 

thoughtful, that it takes opposite sides of this ques- 
tion according to the department of life to which it 
is applied. If it is the spiritual department, the 
whole drift of the age is towards inwardness, with 
denial of, or indifference to, any force or value in 
environment. Faith and spiritual condition are 
deemed so wholly interior in their sources and arena 
of action, that they are hardly allowed a place even 
in conversation ; much less do they require an en- 
vironing form and habit. But if the question refers 
to education, to health, to social habits, to culture, 
there is a disposition to make much of environment. 
Strange inconsistency of an age that imagines itself 
logical ! It has taught us the great word and truth 
of environment ; we ask it to be consistent in its 
application of it. 

This word environment has become a sort of key- 
word in modern thought. It would not have so 
fastened itself on common speech were there not a 
fresh and intense sense of some truth for which it 
stands. It is an old word, as old as the language, 
but the fact or force that it represents is far larger, 
or rather is far more plainly recognized, than here- 
tofore. The ancient and also the eternal truth is 
that man grows from within out. It is from within, 
— thoughts, principles, beliefs, desires, affections, 
purposes, — that a man's life takes shape. This is 
eternal, unchangeable truth ; the Christ declared 
it, the poets and philosophers repeat it, it under- 
lies the great theories of education, it is the first 
principle of the Christian faith. But all truth is 
double. Man grows also from without. If the seed 



202 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

of growth is sown within him, the moisture and 
light and air that determine the growth are from 
■without. 

It has been recognized of late that the environ- 
ment of men has affected them far more than has 
been supposed. The immense variety in all anjmal 
life is, how far we know not, but to an immense 
degree, the result of varying external conditions, 
or change of environment. The favorite scientific 
thought of the day holds to a certain unity of life 
at the outset, and that the variety is due to external 
causes. This probably is not a universal truth, but 
it is a truth of immense sweep. Physically, man is 
molded by climate, by food, by occupation. Men- 
tally he is molded by institutions, by government, 
by inherited beliefs and tendencies. It is a truth 
of wide range and significance, and just now rather 
overshadows the other and greater truth, that man 
grows from within, and has his shape in a spiritual 
germ wrapped up in himself. 

There is, however, a general inconsistency in its 
application. In the natural sciences, especially those 
pertaining to plants and animals, the environment 
is studied quite as much as the nature of the plant 
or animal. So the peculiarities of races and nations 
and communities are explained by their surround- 
ings ; there is less talk of blood and more of condi- 
tion. The social science of the day plays about 
the external condition of the degraded masses, and 
wisely so, for the without must be reformed as well 
as the within. In short, in every department of 
thought except one, there is a deep sense of the 
value and power of environment. 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 203 

The department from wMch it is excluded is re- 
ligion ; everywhere else proper external conditions 
are insisted on ; the organization of society must 
aid and reflect its culture ; a city must have public 
buildings and institutions that correspond to its 
growth ; the value of art in shaping mind and char- 
acter is thoroughly felt, the influence of good houses, 
pure air, sweet water, shapely architecture, fine pro- 
portion and color is everywhere recognized, and 
justly. But when we come to religion, we find that 
the favorite thought of the day has halted. 

There is no graver accusation to be brought 
against the age than this inconsistency, and espe- 
cially on the part of those who make the most of 
environment, emphasizing it everywhere until they 
come to this part of life, where they stop and say : 
" Religion is a spiritual matter ; it is all within ; 
it is something not to be spoken of; a spirit of 
reverence is all that is needed — the form may 
go ; be humble, but you need not pray ; fear God, 
but you need not trouble yourself about church 
or worship ; keep children pure, but don't burden 
their minds with the forms of religion." We recog- 
nize in this a very general and popular habit of 
thought, especially in two classes, — the scientific 
class, and the vast bulk of the people who have 
caught its way of thinking. There are two classes 
yet exempt, — - the humble, believing class, and the 
few who are too intelligent to be deceived by the 
transient fallacy. 

I think those of us who still hold on to the value 
of the external forms of religion may well ask of 



204 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

those who do not, to be consistent. They have taught 
us the immense truth in that word environment ; 
we ask them, by their own logic, to carry their idea 
into religion, instead of coming to a dead halt on 
its threshold. We ask them not to turn their backs 
on their philosophy by making the spiritual culture 
of a man an exception to his physical and mental 
culture. We ask the man who is particular that 
his children should live under the disciplining influ- 
ence of fine art, and good society, and beautiful 
scenery, and healthful surroundings, to act on the 
same wise principle in training his children in eter- 
nal morality. As things are going, the latter is left 
out ; the forms of religion are passing away from 
the family ; there is no daily grace over meat, no 
household prayer and hymn, no systematic teaching 
of religious truth and duty ; the church is void of 
children ; young men, for the most part, do not 
attend church ; the act of worship no longer is es- 
teemed of value for the young ; the great mass hold 
it to be of small importance for any. And so the 
entire matter of environment in religion is dropping 
away from society more and more. It is a fact of 
immense significance that young people no longer 
frequent the churches, — which means that a gen- 
eration is coming on that is not trained in worship 
and religion. What will come of it cannot be ac- 
curately foreseen ; but it will be a state properly 
named as atheistic. 

The difficult point to contend with in this state 
of things is a certain conceit and assumption of 
superiority. It used to be said that the religioua 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 205 

man assumed to be better and wiser than the out- 
sider, but to-day it can be said that the assumption 
is on the other side. There is a suppressed sneer 
for those who still go to church, and worship God 
in any outward way. It is a common and not sup- 
pressed boast, especially on the part of young men, 
that they are '' not much of a churchman," for such 
is the phrase for stating that they have thrown 
away the whole thing, — outgrown it, they claim. 
They rather pity you that you also have not out- 
grown it, and look down upon you from their 
agnostic heights as very deluded and quite behind 
the age. There is nothing so difficult to contend 
with as conceit, unless it be fashion, and, alas ! this 
practical atheism is supported by these two but- 
tresses. The man who still holds on to the forms 
and strict observances of religion meets a subtle 
current of mild, pitjdng contempt. The young 
man who goes to church puts himself outside the 
vast majority, whose jeers are not lacking. 

The reason of this inconsistency is that, as yet, 
there is but little recognition of any environment 
except a physical one ; there is failure to see that 
our twofold nature implies a twofold environ- 
ment ; that as a material world enfolds the body 
and plays into it with educating forces, so there is 
a world of moral and spiritual fact that is the thea- 
tre and condition of moral and spiritual culture. I 
am aware that the realit}^ of this world is ques- 
tioned. But let us consult the poets, who are the 
best philosophers. It is in the very essence of 
poetry that it recognizes this double environment ; 



206 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

without it, it would liave no vocation, no field, no 
possibility of existence even. Pegasus loses Lis 
wings and becomes a plow-horse. All thought is re- 
duced to a bare realization of material facts, - — man 
a thinker, but with nothing to think of except mat- 
ter ! All poetry, all high art, is a protest against 
this degrading conclusion. By its own inspired in- 
stinct it assumes a moral and spiritual order that 
enfolds man and plays into him. Shakespeare, al= 
most without fail, puts every great moral action 
into a framework of corresponding physical like- 
ness. The tempest in Lear's heart is linked to the 
tempest of the elements by more than a fancy. 
The moonlight sleeping on the bank, and the dis- 
tant music, have a logical relation to the lovers' 
hearts. When " fair is foul, and foul is fair," these 
moral confusions '' hover through the fog and filthy 
air," and are uttered on " a hlasted heath." When 
the noble king draws nigh to the castle in confiding 
love and gratitude, — 

" The air 
Nimbly and gently recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses." 

As the hour of Banquo's murder draws on, — 

" Good things of day begin to droop and drowse." 

Macbeth appeals to night to aid him in his crime. 
Thus, throughout, this master of thought throws 
back into the physical world the reflections of the 
moral acts done within it, but on what ground, 
except that in and behind the physical there is a 
moral order on which they repose. He could not 
find in nature a reflection of moral acts, if nature 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 207 

itself were not an expression of moral realities. 
The physical itself is environed and contained by 
the spiritual. Indeed, the whole relation of man 
to nature runs up into morals for its explanation, 
nor can it be found elsewhere. Thus, the uniform- 
ity of natural law, when brought into contact with 
the free will of man, means a fixed moral habit. 
Thus, his recurring natural wants tend to fix him 
in wise and orderly ways that are more and higher 
than physical customs. And so the uniformity of 
nature's forces and operations have not only a moral 
significance, but become sources and educators of 
moral habits. Man is thus being trained as a 
moral being into a certain affinity with the courses 
of nature ; the stars rise and set in him ; the steadi- 
ness of gravitation is reduced to a moral equivalent 
in his obedient heart. This steadfast environment 
of natural law is simply a plan and method, so far 
as it goes, for getting man into a corresponding 
moral state, — uniform but free, and so tending to 
produce a fixed yet free character, — brought up, at 
last, to the nature of God whose perfect freedom 
finds expression in the uniformity of his laws. 

It will not answer to shut out character from 
these external orders, and confine it to an interplay 
of emotions and convictions in our secret bosoms ; 
it must have another world than its own to secure 
and draw out its development. And such a world 
is provided. The nation when viewed as a moral 
order and citizenship is made sacred, the family 
when regarded as divine and eternal, society when 
it is felt to be a relation of righteousness, the church 



208 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

when it is recognized as the necessary and natural 
condition of spiritual life, — these are the outer 
walls of the environment upon which high character 
depends, and by which it is shaped in its general 
features. But as within a walled city there arc* 
other walls environing household life, and within 
these still other walls enclosing the individual, and 
as the body itself is a sort of wall about the spirit, 
— all needed to secure a full, sound life, — so chrii-- 
acter must have successive rings or layers of envi- 
ronment about it in order that it may have fullness 
and strength. 

I believe it to be one of the chief mistakes of the 
age, the fruit of an excessive individualism, tliat 
the value of such environment in shaping and fix- 
ing character is overlooked. There are more vit?J 
points on the other side, life is from within, but 
truth is double ; it can reach no height but on the 
balancing pinions of the within and the without ; 
clip either wing and it circles round and round and 
at last comes to the earth. The outward drill of 
religious observance and spiritual habit is as need- 
ful as the devout feeling, even though, like the 
river of life, it flows out of the throne of God. One 
logically implies the other, but it does not neces- 
sarily secure it. One may run the risk of formal- 
ism, but the other runs the risk of extinction. It 
is a matter of regret that to stand within or without 
the church is getting to be regarded with indiffer- 
ence. And if within, the recurring duties of the 
relation are regarded as hardly obligatory or even 
important. Now, this framework of Christian serr. 



f 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 209 

vice is indispensable to Christian character, and the 
necessary condition of its permanence and steadi- 
ness. The outward habit tends to create an inward 
habit ; the external method favors the internal dis- 
position and becomes its measure, as in a plant the 
soil and light are the conditions and the measure 
of the growth of the vital principle within it. 

Here lies the secret of public worship ; we do 
not worship because we feel like it, but that we 
may feel. The feeling may have died out under 
the pressure of the world, but coming together 
from mere habit, and starting on the level of mere 
custom, we soon feel the stirring of the wings of 
devotion, and begin to rise heavenward on the pin- 
ions of song and prayer. This is well understood 
in England, and underlies the much criticized " Ca- 
thedral system."" To one who goes for the first 
time from our simple American churches into an 
English cathedral, York or Westminster, and en- 
counters its elaborate ritual, repeated twice every 
day, often to almost no congregation, a service com- 
posed largely of singing, the prayers intoned, the 
Scriptures read in a strange penetrating monotone, 
^ it seems the vainest form, a relic of popery, a 
thing kept up to please the ear and eye, and to 
veap the fruits of the rich endowments. There is, 
indeed, much to criticize, much that might well be 
changed, much that might well be added ; but the 
longer one thinks of this system and usage, the 
more one suspects there may be in it solid sense 
and far-reaching wisdom , he sees in it a nearly in- 
destructible embodiment and assertion of worship 
14 



210 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

The building itself is of stone, its history shades off 
into dimly recorded ages. In its crypt lie the ashes 
of the great for a thousand years ; on its walls are 
the names and effigies of statesmen and soldiers and 
philosophers and saints ; its pavements are worn 
with the tread of generations. It is vast, beautiful, 
solemn, enduring ; it spreads wide and generous 
over the earth, resisting the encroachments of this 
world's eager hands, and rising high into the pure 
spaces of heaven. St. Paul's is not a beautiful struc- 
ture, but it overlooks the Bank of England and the 
Exchange. And thus all over England, in towns 
nowhere two hours apart, are found these great 
churches, with their corps of clergy and choirs, with 
daily service heralded by softly chiming bells, ut- 
tered by divinest music, and invested with the sol- 
emn usage of long ages. There is no interruption of 
this service, no vacation, no holiday, no break from 
pestilence or war or political change. Here is a 
mighty fact tremendously asserted ; it forces a sort 
of inevitable reverence, not the highest and purest 
indeed, but something worth having. It becomes 
the conservator of the faith, and in the only way in 
which it can be conserved, through the reverent 
sentiment and poetry of our nature. Hence, it has 
reduced the entire service to song and chant. The 
prayers and creeds are not said but sung. Trans- 
lated thus into sentiment, etherealized into poetry, 
the hard and outworn part of them vanishes away, 
and their real spirit lays hold of the spirit, and is 
sent up into the spiritual heavens on the wings of 
song ; for a creed is not made to be read as prose, 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 211 

but to be sung as poetry ; and it is all the truer 
and more truly confessed because so rendered. The 
fresh critic says of much of this service, why not 
change it ? Why not suit it to the times ? And 
indeed one may justl}^ press such questions, but the 
answer also has force : " We want an unchanging 
assertion of our faith in the worship of God : it 
ought not to change with the fickle tide of human 
thought ; its real meaning is keyed to unchanging 
human need ; it has met these needs in ages past, 
and it will meet them for years to come ; if you 
require changes, make them for yourself as you go 
along — the church is broad and tolerant." 

The practical question arises. Has this great sys- 
tem real power ; does it keep alive reverence and 
speak back to the lives of the people ? It would 
be idle to claim that it is the onl}^ or main chan- 
nel of religious life in England. The dissenting 
churches reach more of the people and enforce a 
more direct and cogent influence ; but neither will 
or ought to yield to the other ; the wise men on 
either side do not antagonize one another ; each 
has its field and method. The main value of the 
established church is its lofty and unshaken asser- 
tion of the worth of worship — keeping alive rever- 
ence, which is the mother of morality, and furnish^ 
ing a public environment of the common faith. 

This system of form and worship is kept up be- 
cause the highest culture and intelligence in Eng- 
land believe in it. There is there as here a tide of 
shallow and conceited thought setting against ex- 
ternal observance ; it will not deny God but will 



212 MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 

build Him no altar ; it will be reverent but it will 
not worship by voice or knee. The service, as it 
is observed in the cathedrals and in the parish 
churches all over England, and in the Presbyterian 
churches of Scotland, which are presided over by 
men equally intelligent and robust in intellect, is 
the protest of the best minds in Great Britain 
against the divorce of religion from the forms of 
religion. We have not, in our country, tbe aids 
and bulwarks against this disintegrating influence 
that are there so effective. The immemorial usage 
and the thorough organization of worship afford, at 
least, a covert while the fitful winds of unbelief 
sweep over the people. Here we have no antiquity 
that commands veneration, and our organization of 
worship is slight and shifting. But all the more 
we need, as individuals and churches, to hold right 
principles on this subject and cling to good cus- 
toms. We cannot afford, in this day, to let any- 
thing in the way of religious observance pass away 
without the severest challenge. We can do nothing 
better for ourselves, for our families, for the faith, 
than secure for each a full, ministering environment 
of religious custom. A man should have for him- 
self certain religious habits and usage, — something 
of an external nature that shall speak back to him 
in confirmation of his belief ; it helps to make it 
definite, to keep it constant ; it bridges over the 
weak and languid spots in one's experience ; it is 
a body holding together the soul and playing into 
it from the external world. It is the belief of all 
churches that the sacraments are an outward sigu 



MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 213 

of inward grace. It is a relation sanctioned by the 
highest thought of all ages ; without religious ob- 
servance there can be no full, strong, rewarding 
spiritual life, and hence no real life. 

More imperatively is it needed in the household. 
A family without prayer, without a domestic ritual 
of worship, is an anomaly ; it is as though the body 
were without an eye or a limb ; it will be weak 
where strength is most needed ; it will lack a cer- 
tain fine flavor and sweetness, and will grow hard 
and dreary, and at last desolate because the ave- 
nues of light and lasting joy and peace have been 
kept closed. And for like reasons, the claims of 
the Church should be heeded. It is the altar before 
which every man should worship, because he is 
linked to an external world, and also to a world of 
fellow-men. 

If you would have a faith, put under it a solid 
earth, and overarch it with an infinite heaven; 
Btand firm on one, and look steadfastly into the 
other. 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIE:N^CE. 



"And hear at times a sentinel 

Who moves about from place to place, 
And whispers to the worlds of space, 
In the deep night that all is well. 

"And all is well, though faith and form 
Be sundered in the night of fear; 
Well roars the storm to those that hear 
A deeper voice across the storm." 

In Memoriam, cxxvi. 

" The foundations of a faith in a future life lie outside of Kevelation, 
and ought, therefore, to be disclosed independently of it. . . . It is im- 
mortality which gives promise of Revelation, not Revelation which lays 
in our own constitution and in the government of God the foundations 
of immortality." — Pres. Bascom, Philosophy of Religion, page 185. 

"There is in man the suspect that in the transient course of things 
there is yet an intimation of that which is not transient. The grass that 
fades has yet in the folded and falling leaves of its flower that perishes 
the intimation of a beauty that does not fade. The treasures that are 
frayed by the moth and worn by the rust are not as those in which love 
and faith and hope abide. There is a will that in its purpose does not 
yield to mortal wrong. There is a joy that is not of emulation. There 
is a freedom that is other than the mere struggle for existence in physi- 
cal relations, and is not determined in its source or end by these finite 
conditions." — Mulfokd, Republic of God, page 243. 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 



" Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what mannef 
of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for 
and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which 
the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt 
with fervent heat? But, according to his promise, we look for new 
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." — 2 Peter 
iu. 11-13. 

It is a singular fact that these words have far 
more probability of truth than they had a genera- 
tion ago. Then, the stability of the physical uni- 
verse was held to be a settled fact of science ; it is 
not so regarded now. The science of to-day is in- 
clined to the opinion that the physical universe will 
undergo great catastrophes and probably be extin- 
guished. But while science thus adds its weight 
to Scripture, it throws diflBculties in the way of be- 
lief in future existence by destroying the only 
known theatre of life. If this world and the uni- 
verse of worlds are to undergo at times such catas- 
trophes as science and Scripture indicate, even to 
possible destruction, where shall immortal man 
abide ? Where is he when the heavens are on fire 
and the elements melt with heat ? The Scriptures 
do not heed the question, but modern thought stum- 
bles over it into unbelief. 

The question most eagerly urged to-day is that of 



218 IMMOETALITY AND SCIENCE. 

human immortality. It is doubted and assailed on 
all sides, consciously and unconsciously. It is dis- 
cussed and denied under definite form ; it mingles 
with the current thought of the hour ; it haunts the 
most thoughtful minds ; it disturbs the faith of the 
most devout. It is doubted not only by science j 

but by theology. There is springing up a school .^ 

of religious thinkers, learned and devout, that de- -r 

nies the inherent immortality of man, regarding it 
as an achievement, or result of faith and virtue. 
The religious form of this opinion is immortality 
conditioned upon holiness ; its scientific form is the 
survival of the fittest. They are the two sides of 
one theory and tend to support each other, though 
the advocates of each v^ork their vein of inquiry 
independently of the other. It is not impossible f 

that the scientific theory, the survival of the fittest, 
so far as it relates to the past of existence and up ] 

even to the very verge of the working of the Chris- | 

tian system, will prevail, and win common accept- 
ance ; but it is a question if Christianity is not the 
exact reversal of this principle, and the introduc- 
tion of another phase of God's eternal laws. Chris- 
tianity teaches not that the strongest only survive 
but also the weak. Indeed Christianity is not itselt 
except it teaches this. Its inmost principle, its en- 
tire significance, is the salvation of the weak. Its 
contrast with nature is that it saves and does not 
destroy. It abdicates its place and function when 
it admits that any part of humanity perishes at 
death. 

But the common, every-day skepticism of immor« 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 219 

tality springs from a somewhat general though not 
very thorough knowledge of the scientific theories 
as to life and origin now at the front. It is the in- 
fluence, rather than the knowledge, of these theories 
that lies behind the doubts. 

Physical science chiefly touches human destiny 
at two points of what is technically known as the 
principle of Continuity ; namely, the resolution of 
thought and feeling into molecular changes ; and 
the development of man from preceding lower or- 
ders of life. The principle is thought to militate 
against immortality, as it implies that all the po- 
tency of life is within matter, and that all mental 
and moral activities are but the operation of organ- 
ized matter. Under this hypothesis thought and 
feeling are resolved into the whirl of molecules and 
the formation and destruction of tissue, a wholly 
material process, necessary in its character and ad- 
mitting of no permanent personality. To find any- 
thing outside of this all-comprehending law of 
which immortality can be predicated, anything that 
survives when the bond breaks that holds the whirl- 
ing atoms together, is an impossibility under this 
conception. On the contrary, its analogies seem to 
point to an opposite result. Personality under this 
theory is but a momentary lifting up of certain par- 
ticles and forces from the ocean of being into which 
it soon falls back, like a wreath of spray snatched 
by the wind from the crest of a wave, drawing its 
energy from it, never ceasing to play into it, and 
finally mingling with it. The main thing is not 
personality but the all ; the chief object is not to 



220 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 

erect lasting personalities but to keep tlie great 
ocean of activity in full working order; the real 
value of existence lies not in yielding an order of 
enduring persons, but in the undiminished energy 
of itself, throwing up, for a moment, such phenom- 
ena as trees and beasts and men, as if for its own 
secret delight. So long as science held only this 
view of the world it was not wholly devoid of na 
bility of sentiment. It could speak of immortality 
if not of enduring personality ; the forces entering 
into and passing out of human life do not cease 
but live and act forever ; men perish, but man sur* 
vives ; the generations pass away, but the race en= 
dures. Here, indeed, is a certain kind of immortal- 
ity, capable even of sustaining a lofty, if not real 
theory of altruistic morality. 

But of late, these fine sentiments have been losing 
their force. There are indications that leading 
physicists are getting somewhat concerned at their 
own conclusions, and are surmising if there may 
not be some world or order outside the reach of 
their tests ; or if in that something that lies back of 
whirling atoms, — that something which it is forced 
to recognize though it cannot lay hold of it, — there 
may not be a universe spreading out in regions as 
vast as those revealed by the microscope and tele- 
scope ; if this universe of suns and planets, of earth 
and air, of revolving atoms and continuous force, is 
not, after all, a hemisphere against which lies an- 
other universe as real as this, a universe of causes 
and beginnings, and therefore perhaps of ultimate 
destinies. For science is now asserting that the 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 221 

material universe is limited in its duration. It is 
simply a Yortex-ring, like a puff of smoke, having 
its origin in friction, and at last to be brought to an 
end by friction. It is matter diffused by heat, los- 
ing its heat and uniting again as cold cinder. The 
sun once was all, and all once more will become the 
sun, and the reunited sun will lose its heat in space, 
and when heat is gone, all motion will cease, and 
eternal silence and death will reign throughout 
space. Not a cheerful gospel certainly, this that 
science last reveals to us. It is not strange that 
the dreariness of such conclusions repels the mind 
towards some better hope, and that physicists are 
working other veins of truth, if for no other end 
than to escape the horror of desolation their own 
triumphs have compelled them to face^ Mr. Fiske 
says : " There is little that is even intellectually 
satisfying in tbe awful picture which science shows 
us of giant worlds concentrating out of nebulous 
vapor, developing with prodigious waste of energy 
into theatres of all that is grand and sacred in spir- 
itual endeavor, clashing and exploding again into 
dead vapor balls, only to renew the same toilful 
process without end — a senseless bubble-play of 
Titan forces, with life, love, and aspiration brought 
forth only to be extinguished." Such sentiments 
characterize the ablest physicists of the age. 

It is a great achievement to have traced this 
physical universe down to its end, and taken an in- 
tellectual measure of it. One of three possible des- 
tinies is now held to be certain : it will either cease 
to exist, or it will exist as a frigid mass of dead 



222 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 

matter ; or it will forever repeat a process of alter* 
nate vaporization and condensation. Whichever it 
be, the question rises with infinite emphasis : What 
is the end of creation ? The study of the material 
universe takes us farther and farther from life and 
meaning and use. We reach, at last, either nothing- 
ness, or a cinder, or a ceaseless clash and repulsion of 
vapor-balls called worlds, with possible moments of 
life amidst vast cycles of lifeless ages. We reach the 
end of a road but find nothing to tell us why it ex- 
ists. The question forces itself upon us, if by look- 
ing in other directions we cannot reverse this pro- 
cess and find some worthy end of creation, something 
instead of nothing, the play of mind instead of the 
whirl of molecules, life instead of death. The re- 
cent verdict of science as to the fate of the material 
universe, drives us with irresistible force to belief 
in an unseen, spiritual world, — not the belief of 
religious faith, but of cold, hard reason. The pro- 
foundest depth of absurdity into which the mind 
can sink is the denial of purpose. Meaning, worth, 
use, there must be somewhere. If we cannot find 
it in the seen, we must search for it in the unseen. 
If the path into the visible leads away from it, we 
must open one into the invisible to see if it cannot 
be found there. There is no theory that lays hold 
of the universe with so comprehensive a grasp as 
the principle of continuity, but like all other mate- 
rialistic theories, it leaves a somewhat unexplained 
and outside its grasp, a somewhat that embraces its 
beginning, consciousness, moral freedom, and the 
main-spring of its activity ; but it may be consid 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 223 

ered as favorable to immortality by reaction from 
its own triumphs. It remands us with terrible em- 
phasis, to some other order for light which it hag 
demonstrated to itself that it cannot find, finding 
only darkness. 

The other main point at which physical science 
touches human destiny, is in connection with that 
part of the doctrine of physical evolution which 
holds that all forms of life are developed from pre- 
ceding forms under the impulse of some unknown 
force, — a theory not yet exactly defined and far 
from being fully proved. So far as it is accepted 
in its extreme form, it seems to violate the hope of 
immortality by bringing all life into one category, 
and under one law, with the apparent inference of 
one destiny. If personal identity can be predicated 
of one set of beings, why not of all, if all are one ? 
The very vastness of the hope seems its own de- 
struction. Bishop Butler, encountering the same 
objection from another line of argument, boldly 
accepts this logic, and does not withhold immor- 
tality from the brutes. Aside from logical consid- 
erations, it may be a harmless belief, but while the 
verdict of human thought has always been in favor 
of the immortality of man, it has rejected that of 
the brute ; and the permanent impressions of the 
race are not to be disregarded. It does not follow 
that because all lives may be developed from a 
preceding order, one destiny awaits them. It is a 
process of involving as well as evolving, and the 
former may introduce new conditions, if not new 
forces, that affect the final issue. It may even be 



224 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 

granted that all the potentiality of life is drawn 
from preceding orders, without being forced to the 
conclusion that their destiny is the same. This 
potentiality has an accretive quality, in so far at 
least as to form new combinations. It may thus 
unite energies that shall enable it "to shoot the 
gulf we call death." Take the extremest form of 
evolution, ■ — matter having all the potency of life 
within itself, — it does not necessarily exclude future 
existence. The space between an ascidian and a 
thinking brain is as wide as that between temporary 
existence and unlimited existence. If an ascidian 
can evolve mind, the brief life of an ascidian may 
evolve endless life. Somewhere along the process 
it may pick up the quality of continuance as some- 
where, according to the theory, it picks up the 
sense of moral freedom ; for there is nothing in this 
assumed potentiality of matter adverse to contin- 
uance. On the contrary, as the theory presupposes 
the eternity of matter, and the continuity of force, 
the probability would be that the vital potentiality 
of matter embraced a principle of eternal duration 
that would at last come out in some of the higher 
forms of life. If matter can attain to mind that 
longs for immortality, may not its potentiality be 
able to achieve it ? If it can develop the concep- 
tion, may it not be able to develop the fact ? A 
matter that can work itself up into such forms as 
a Shakespeare or a Newton, might be expected 
to reach corresponding achievements in regard to 
time. 

If the question still recurs, at what point in the 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 225 

process of evolution, granting its truth for the mo- 
ment, the principle of immortality is inserted, or 
gets possession ? — a question of great pungency un- 
der the principle of continuity, we answer it by 
instancing an analogy. At what point of its growth 
does a plant acquire the power of self-perpetuation ? 
As a shoot it utterly perishes if cut down ; the lusty 
after-growth of stem and branches also withers into 
nothingness ; the flower is not " a self-reviving thing 
of power ; " but the flower, gathering light and dew 
into its glowing bosom, intermingles with them its 
own life-essence and so bears a seed around which 
it folds its faded petals as a shroud, and falls into 
the dust, no longer to perish but to live again. 
This is more than illustration, it is an argument. 
A living thing under the law of development comes 
to have a power of self -perpetuation that it did not 
have at first ; why should it not be so with the life 
that has culminated in man ? He is the flower of 
life, and in his heart alone may there be found the 
seed of eternal existence. 

But this phase of the subject is unsatisfactory ; 
it is not necessary to consider it under these sup- 
positions, and we turn to another. We want not 
mere continuance but some solid ground for belief 
in personality after death. An immortality of force, 
of vital energy, of impersonal life, is a matter of 
small concern to us. If this be our destiny, all 
personal hopes, plans, and motives must be confined 
to this side of the grave. Our little life is indeed 
rounded with a sleep, a brief journey from noth- 
ingness to nothingness. But reason and human 

15 



226 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 

nature itself forbid us to accept any theory of ex- 
istence that can only be named with a sigh, as this 
must be. The keynote of the universe is joy, and 
every theory of destiny must harmonize with it. 
Evolution cannot impair the fact of personality here 
or hereafter, simply because man transcends nature, 
which is the field of evolution. It is true that we 
are very thoroughly mixed with the nature about 
us, and physically may be one with it. We give 
our bodies over to the evolutionist to predicate what 
he will of them, but we draw a line that science is 
forced to respect, between our physical and moral 
nature, and claim for the latter a diverse set of 
laws and a diverse destiny. Man may comprise all 
that has gone before him in nature, but he is not 
summed up by it. As the grand proof of this, we 
adduce the fact of the moral nature with its prime 
characteristic of freedom. This takes man out of 
the category of the material world, and exempts 
him from its destiny. He covers, but he also tran- 
scends nature and is a supra-nhtural being. It is 
absurd to suppose that the order of law that reigns 
universal in the realm of nature should yield such a 
thing as free-will. Mr. Darwin himself admits that 
"free-will is a mystery insoluble to the naturalist." 
Necessity, which is the equivalent of law, never 
could evolve freedom. But choice, or freedom, is 
the constituting characteristic of man, upon which 
is built the whole fabric of his life and moral nature. 
It makes him a person ; it is the basis of his his- 
tory. It puts him above the order and on-going of 
nature. Make the chain of evolution as strong as 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 227 

you will, bind man down to nature by every mus- 
cle and nerve and bioplastic cell of his body, here 
is something unaccounted for, and by far the greater 
part of him. As a moral being, he is utterly inex- 
plicable on any theory of evolution that attempts 
wholly to account for him. As moral, he is at- 
tended by a vast array of faculties, experiences, and 
phenomena, that evolution cannot explain, such as 
consciousness of identity, abstract conceptions, moral 
obligations, the sense of God, the consciousness of a 
will. If natural science refuses to accept these as 
legitimate phenomena, or treats them as mere en- 
largements of physical instincts, so much the worse 
for natural science ; it thereby abdicates its func- 
tion of explaining phenomena. The greater physi- 
cists perceive this. Professor Tyndall says that the 
chasm between brain-action and consciousness is im- 
passable, that " here is a rock upon which mate- 
rialism must split whenever it pretends to be a 
complete philosophy of the human mind." The 
admission is valuable, not merely because of its 
origin, but for its impregnable truth. With such 
a chasm between the two parts of man's nature, — 
molecular processes and perpetual flux on one side, 
and conscious identity, moral sense, and freedom on 
the other side, — we need not feel troubled at any- 
thing physical evolution may assert of man : it sim- 
ply cannot touch him. We may now build our 
argument as to his destiny, unhindered by any 
clamor that may reach us from the other side of 
this chasm, — a chasm that science itself recognizes 
in our composite nature. 



228 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 

Thus far we have simply outlined some of the 
reasons why such theories as that of the continuity 
of force, and physical evolution throw no barrier 
in the way of possible immortaflity. The former 
fails to account for man, and is intolerable to the 
human mind. The latter does not account for the 
beginnings of life, for the plan of any life, for the 
source of the potency that works in life, or for 
the reason that guides its workings; it does not 
account for the difference between the instincts of 
the brutes and the mental and moral faculties of 
man, nor for the sense of personal identity; nor 
can any theory account for it that is limited by 
matter with its universal law of constant flux and 
atomic change. Personal identity is impossible un- 
der any theory whatever of materialism. A con- 
sciously enduring being cannot be got out of a 
perpetual flux. It can proceed only from a non- 
atomic, and therefore non-fluctuating substance, — 
from something therefore wholly opposite to mat- 
ter. Matter cannot uphold the consciousness of 
identity. When this is apprehended, we shall have 
little difficulty in believing that we are far outside 
its limits, — of another substance and destiny. 

But other difficulties may arise, such as the 
thought that this sense of personal identity may be 
temporary, that as it slowly grew within us, so it 
may slowly die out ; that as our life was drawn out 
into separateness from the great ocean of being, so, 
having some cycle within itself, it will sink back 
into it, as a star rises and sets. Age and infancy 
are very like, especially when each is normal ; sleep 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 229 

and unconsciousness mark both. As there is no 
identity before infancy, is there any after age ? 
The fact that, notwithstanding the extreme plausi- 
bility of this familiar analogy, the human mind has 
never accepted the suggestion, has great signifi- 
cance ; it has instinctively felt that this resemblance 
does not indicate a reality. Descartes argued : " I 
think, therefore I am." Had he continued, I am, 
therefore I shall continue to be, he would have 
uttered as cogent logic. Granted the consciousness 
of personality, and it is impossible to conceive of 
non-existence. If self is a unit and not a conglom- 
erate of atoms, how is it to be got out of existence ? 
We cannot conceive of the annihilation of an ulti- 
mate atom. We can conceive of an organism being 
resolved into ultimate atoms, but not of their de- 
struction ; science and reason agree in this. But 
man is conscious of himself as an entity, — a moral 
unit, — a non-fluctuating, unresolvable, and hence 
indestructible thing. This is the logical expression 
of the common belief in immortalitv, and is the 
basis of the remark of Goethe, that "it is to a 
thinking being quite impossible to think himself 
non-existent." 

The thought that we may sink back into the life- 
flood of the universe from which we came, as a drop 
of water lifted by the wind falls into the ocean, is 
checked by the same sense of the impossibility of 
the loss of personal identity. Whatever may be 
our relations to the source of life, the I, the self, 
must remain. Anything else is, as Goethe says, 
unthinkable. Tennyson asserts the same : — 



230 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 

" That each, who seems a separate whole, 
Should move his rounds, and fusing all 
The skirts of self again, should fall 
Eemerging in the general soul, 

*'Is faith as vague as all unsweet; 
Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside." 

But it may be said, if there is another life, there 
must be another world. Where is it? Of what 
composed ? If it is within the limits, or under the 
laws of matter, it can have no endurance. The 
soul must have a sphere like itself, — permanent, 
unfluctuating. And because it must have it, its 
existence may be asserted on common and well ac- 
cepted grounds of reasoning. Whatever is needed 
to account for and explain any well attested truth 
or phenomenon, may be accepted as real. Thus, 
when the undulatory theory of light was estab- 
lished, it was necessary to assume the existence of 
the luminiferous ether, and there is still almost no 
other proof of its existence than that the nature of 
light demands it. Science has thus created by sim- 
ple deduction a universe of matter. Surely if phi- 
losophy may create a universe in which to float the 
worlds, and convey those quiverings of burning suns 
that we call heat and light, it will not withhold a 
fit sphere for the soul when it breaks away from 
the bonds of matter. We base our proof, however, 
not on mere analogy, but on the simple ground that 
the nature of the soul demands a proper and an- 
swering sphere, as wings demand air, and fins 
water. Otherwise, creation is without order and 
coherence. It is nothing against the existence of 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 231 

sucli a world that we do not see it, or get any report 
of it. The sense of this came over me with great 
power as I once stood upon a spur of the Contra 
Costa Range at New Ahiiaden, and looked down 
upon the valley of Santa Clara that stretched away 
from its base, a floor of emerald, twenty miles to 
the Bay, and twenty miles between the enclosing 
mountains. A thin, blue haze — the miracle of 
beauty in that land — spread gauze-like over the 
landscape, deepening to purple in the hollows of 
the hills, obscuring all traces of human habitations, 
and leaving visible only the vast stretch of fields 
without motion or sound or other indications of life, 
— a visible world. But, I mused, how much more 
real is the world hidden under its distance and 
shroud of azure, the unseen world of human life, 
the play of passion, the strife of ambition, the ache 
of sorrow, the joy of hope, — a world unseen^ but 
so real and intense as to blot the other into insig- 
nificance. 

Were we to search for this sphere of the soul, we 
would not look for it in any refinement of matter, 
nor in any orb beyond the " flaming walls of the 
world," but rather in an order over against this 
visible order, as mind stands over against the body. 
If, however, it be said that the mind must always 
have a body, or something like it, to hold it up, a 
suh-sto, — a something like quicksilver upon a mir- 
ror, to take up and turn back its operations, some- 
thing to sustain reaction and perhaps necessary to 
yield consciousness, — we may follow a hint dropped 
by science in its latest suggestions. Physicists of 



232 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 

the highest rank hold to the existence of a pure 
or non-atomic fluid filling all space, in which the 
worlds swim, a sort of first thing to which atomic 
matter is a second thing. But while science thus 
acknowledges a non-atomic fluid filling the inter- 
stellar spaces as a basis upon which the universe is 
a cosmos, or a united whole, it cannot impugn the 
analogy of a non-atomic soul fluid, or ether, as the 
basis or body upholding the mind, if we care to 
claim it. As we can imagine all the worlds from 
" Blue-eyed Lyra's topmost star " to the smallest 
asteroid, swept together into some far-off corner of 
space — a not improbable result — and leave it clear 
of atomic matter yet filled with ether ready to float 
and unite another universe, so the material atomic 
body may be swept away and gathered to its orig- 
inal dust, leaving the immaterial body intact, a 
basis for the mind and its action as it had been 
before. Science and Revelation here draw very 
near to each other : science demanding a non-atomic 
substance as the only possible basis of conscious 
identity, and Revelation asserting " there is a spir- 
itual body ; " and " God giveth it a body even as it 
pleased Him." 

The subject leads us into a region of mystery, 
where indeed all truth conducts us, shading off in 
quicker or slower degree, according to the nature 
of the truth. What can you say of human life ? 
Where will you get your terms for describing life ? 
Where will you stand as you draw off and look at 
life — being? Make being objective, and where are 
you when you contemplate it ? What upholds your 



IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 233 

feet ; what is the light of your eyes as you look at 
this fact of existence ? You cannot tell ; you are 
in a region of mystery. Outside of all our thinking 
lies this unknowable region, a land of mystery. 
Every true thinker reaches it quickly. It is igno- 
rance to overlook this field, into which run paths 
from every department of study. A crystal of salt 
is as mysterious as conscience. Question it with 
What ? Whence ? For what ? and you are at once 
in the realm of darkness. As the mystery of space 
invests the physical creation, so do our thoughts 
Jose themselves in mystery whenever certain crucial 
questions like these are connected with ourselves. 
But mystery implies faith ; they are correlatives. 
I do not mean faith in any specific sense, but rather 
that as all thought runs at once into mystery, all 
knowledge has in it an element of faith. And by 
faith, I mean a fixed hope that there is truth that 
cannot be attested except as it bears witness to 
itself. And no man is a thinker who shuts this 
faith-element out of his speculations. For no man 
can be called a thinker who does not follow the 
paths opened by the study of any fact or thing. 
The secret of thought lies in tracing the connec- 
tions and bearings of truth. I go farther : no man 
is in any high sense a thinker upon whom these 
questions, Whence ? Why ? For what ? are not 
pressing down for answer. The secret, the soul of 
thought, is not disclosed till, in the shrouded cham- 
bers of stillest meditation, these questions are raised 
in respect to whatever the hands touch and the eyes 
see and the ears hear. And whenever these ques' 



234 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 

tioiis, Whence ? Why ? For what ? are asked, the 
questioner finds himself in depths of mystery. If it 
be life that he questions, it is dumb before him. If 
it be a crystal, its gleam dies out ; it cannot tell 
whence it came, or whither it goes, or why it is. 
Into this region we are driven when once we begin 
to think, a region where we have no light but such 
as comes from our hopes, no assurance but such as 
is generated by the assertions of our own souls. 
Finding myself here, I question no longer the dumb 
unanswering world about me, but I question myself. 
I ask, as I have a right to ask. What do I want ? 
What do I need ? What is the meaning of these 
voices that never cease utterance, like the echoes 
of tides within sea-caverns, voices that speak of 
God and self and destiny. I question these, and 
though it be still a world of mystery about me, I 
get answers that are plainer, and that reach deeper 
down, and higher up, than when I look into the 
face of gleaming planets, or drop dredging plum- 
mets into the depths of the sea. I get, at least, 
affirmations that yield me repose, and take some- 
thing of the vanity and jangle out of life. And if 
here I raise the question of destiny, I find myself at 
liberty to believe in what I want. I need life, and 
I take it, and no philosophy of matter or origin can 
pluck it out of my hand. 



BIMOETALITY AWD NATUEE. 



**Who forged that other influence, 
That heat of inward evidence, 
By which he doubts against the sense? 

*' He owns the fatal gift of eyes, 
That read his spirit blindly wise. 
Not simply as a thing that dies. 

" Here sits he shaping wings to fly : 
His heart forebodes a mystery : 
He names the name Eternity." 

Tennyson, The Two Voices, 

" For love, and beauty, and delight. 
There is no death nor change ; their might 
Exceeds our organs', which endure 
No light, being themselves obscure." 

Shelley, The Sensitive Plant. 

** Life loveth life and good: then trust 
What most the spirit would, it must; 
Deep wishes, in the heart that be, 
Are blossoms of necessity." 

David A. Wasson, Seen and Unseen. 

*' I cannot believe and cannot be brought to believe, that the purpose 
©f our creation is fulfilled by our short existence here. To me the ex- 
istence of another world is a necessary supplement of this to adjust its 
inequalities and imbue it with moral significance." 

Thurloav Weed. 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 



" K a man die, shall he live again? " — Job xiv. 14. 

It is a strange fact that the human mind has 
always held to the immortality of the soul, and yet 
has always douTbted it ; always believing but always 
haunted by doubt. Yet this throws no discredit 
upon the truth; rather otherwise. A belief that 
remains persistently rooted in the mind of the race, 
generation after generation, yet ever beset by an 
adverse influence, must have a vitality drawn from 
truth itself ; were the belief not true, the doubt 
would long since have vanquished it, for nothing 
but truth can endure constant questioning. The 
fact, though strange at first sight, is not inexplica- 
ble. It is a truth that takes up, and sets forth the 
antagonism found in man's own nature as a moral 
being put under material conditions, a mind shut 
up in a body. The consciousness of mind and 
moral nature is always asserting immortality ; the 
sense of our bodily conditions is always suggesting 
its impossibility. It is the same thing that has al- 
ways showed itself in philosophy; idealism deny- 
ing the existence of matter, and materialism deny- 
ing the reality of spirit. But the true philosophy 
of the human mind is both idealistic and material- 



238 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

istic ; I am^ the world is, — this is the general ver- 
dict ; it holds both to mind and matter ; but they 
tend to war against each other, mind consciously 
preeminent over matter, and matter forever doubt- 
ing the reality of mind, claiming it to be a part of 
itself. Hence, when the practical question of im- 
mortality is raised, the mind asserts the continu- 
ance of itself after death, subject, however, to the 
doubts raised by our close subjection to matter. It 
is under such conditions that we hold all high 
truths — spiritual, ethical, mental. We do not 
reach unquestioned ground till we come to truths 
of mathematics, the unshared domain of matter. 

In keeping with this, we find that nearly all 
doubt or denial of immortality comes from the 
prevalence o." a materialistic philosophy; nearly al- 
ways from some undue sense or pressure of the ex- 
ternal world. The skeptics are those who study the 
physical world exclusively ; or those who are pecul- 
iarly sympathetic with the order of the material 
universe, or those who fall in with a prevailing 
habit of materialistic thought. Great sinners very 
seldom question immortality. Sin is an irritant of 
the moral nature, keeping it quick, and so long as 
the moral nature has voice, it asserts a future life. 

Just now the doubt is haunting us with unusual 
persistence and power of penetration. Certain 
phases of science stand face to face with immortal- 
ity in Apparent opposition. The doctrine of con- 
tinuity or evolution in its extreme form, by in- 
cluding everything in the one category of matter, 
eeems to render future existence highly improbable. 



# 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 239 

But more than this, there is an atmosphere, engen- 
dered by a common habit of thought, adverse to be- 
lief ; for in morals, everything goes b}^ atmospheres. 
There is a power of the air that sways us, without 
reason or choice. But, as usual, public opinion lags 
behind its origin. While there are schools of sci- 
ence that hold immortality to be impossible, still if 
the verdict of the broadest and highest science 
could be reached it would be found in sympathy 
with the doctrine of a future personal existence. 
For science is rapidly changing its spirit and atti- 
tude. It is revealing more and more the infinite 
possibilities of nature. Its own triumphs have 
made it humble and believing ; it does not now say : 
it is improbable ; but rather, nothing is improbable^ 
The trend of tendency is outward, taking in more 
and more. Its lines of perspective do not converge 
but spread outward, taking in more of spirit as 
they take in more of matter. It is also getting 
over that stultifying principle of positivism that 
nothing is to be believed that cannot be verified by 
result, the most shriveling doctrine that ever found 
place in philosophy. True science admits that some 
things may be true that it cannot verify by result, 
or by any test that it can use. The most thought- 
ful believers in the doctrine of evolution understand 
very well that it does not account for the beginning 
of life, for the plan of any life, for the potency that 
works in .matter, for the facts of consciousness, for 
moral freedom and consequent personality. Here 
are facts and phenomena that it sees must be ac- 
counted for ; and it also sees that they intimate and 



240 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

perhaps demand a future life. In short, science ia 
broadening into philosophy, and is getting philo- 
sophic insight and outlook. 

In considering immortality, it is quite safe to put 
science aside with all its theories of the continuity 
of force, and the evolution of physical life and in- 
wrought potentiality, and the like. There is noth- 
ing here to hinder faith in whatever may be asserted 
of immortality from other sources. It matters not 
what the evolutionist says of our past, or through 
what gradations of being he may trace our physical 
history ; it matters not how we came to be what 
we are. We are what we are, moral beings, with 
personality, freedom, conscience, moral sense ; and 
because we are what we are, there is reason to hope 
for immortal life. Whatever may be the origin of 
our moral nature, it cannot affect its destiny ; our 
past does not determine our future. So much for 
science ; if it cannot say anything for immortality, 
it cannot say anything against it. 

In any attempt to prove immortality, aside from 
the Scriptures, we must rely almost wholly upon 
reasons that render it probable. Our consciousness 
of personality and moral freedom declare it possi- 
ble, but other considerations render it also probable 
and morally certain. Indeed, our faith in immor- 
tality, aside from revelation, rests upon indications 
that point to it, omens that presage it, inwrought 
prophecies that demand it for their fulfillment. 
But let us allow no sense of weakness to invest the 
word prohahility. Many of our soundest convic- 
tions are based on aggregated probabilities. In« 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 241 

deed, all matters pertaining to the future, even the 
sunrise, are matters of probability. 

We propose to name some of the grounds for be- 
lieving that the soul of man is immortal. I speak 
chiefly to those whose faith in the Scriptures is not 
absolute, and to those who are troubled with flashes 
or seasons of doubt that blind them to their better 
hope ; to those also, who, by some state or habit of 
their minds, demand other testimony than that of 
revelation. 

1. The main current of human opinion sets 
strongly and steadily towards belief in immortal- 
ity. Whenever the question has been raised, it 
has been decided in the affirmative. It is a per- 
manent conviction of the race, varied only by soli- 
tary voices of denial, and by periods of doubt, like 
the present, through the over-pressure of hypotheti- 
cal and seemingly antagonistic truth. 

2. The master-minds have been strongest in their 
affirmations of it. We do not refer to those who 
receive it as a part of their religion. In weigh- 
ing the value of the natural or instinctive belief, 
Augustine's faith does not count for so much as 
Cicero's, and Plato's outweighs Bacon's ; Plutarch 
is a better witness than Chrysostom ; Montesquieu 
than Wesley ; Franklin than Edwards ; Emerson 
than Channing ; Greg's hope is more significant than 
Bushnell's faith. All the great minds, often in spite 
of apparently counter philosophies, draw near to the 
doctrine, and are eager to bear testimony to it. 
Even John Stuart Mill, whose religious nature was 
nearly extirpated by an atheistic education, does 

16 



242 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

not say nay when the roll of the great intellects is 
called. Blanco White, another wanderer from the 
fold of faith, wrought into the form of a sonnet so 
perfect that we instinctively call it immortal, an 
argument, the force of which men will feel so long 
as " Hesperus leads the starry host : " — 

" If light caa thus deceive, 
•Wherefore not life? " 

Wordsworth touched the high-water mark of the 
literature of the century in his ode on immortality, 
and Tennyson's greatest poem is throughout exults 
ant in the hope that " Life shall live forever more." 

3. The longing of the soul for life, and its horror 
at the thought of extinction. Emerson profoundly 
says : " When the master of the universe has points 
to carry in his government, he impresses his will in 
the structure of minds." That this inwrought desire 
should only guard the mortal life would be an un- 
worthy use of so deep a passion, even if it did not 
come nigh to deception. The universe is adequate 
to meet the wants of all its children. It does not 
use infinite thoughts for finite ends. There must 
be correlation between desire and fulfillment. 

4. The action of the mind in thought begets a 
sense of a continuous life. One who has learned to 
think finds an endless task before him. He comes 
to the end of nothing, solves nothing, reaches no 
full truth, only a few hints and stepping-stones 
" that slope through darkness up to God." The 
brute probably has a clear understanding of all sub- 
jects upon which it thinks ; that is, the bounds of 
perception and thought are identical ; but man 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 243 

reaches the bounds of nothing. The atom may 
hide a universe, and the seen heaven of stars may 
be but an atom to the whole. We speak of cause 
and effect, but we grasp only a little section of an 
infinite series. We trace cause till eye and thought 
can go no farther, when we reverently say God, 
spanning, in our ignorance, worlds of unattain- 
able truth. We trace effeet only to lose it as the 
drop is lost in the ocean. Thus, with a sense of 
truth, we cannot absolutely measure any truth. All 
things are linked together, and the chain stretches 
either way into infinity. It is a necessity of thought 
to follow it, and the necessity indicates the fact. 
There can be no fit and logical end to thought till it 
has compassed all truth. It is unreasonable to sup- 
pose that we are admitted to this infinite feast only 
to be thrust away before we have well tasted it. 

5. A parallel argument is found in the nature of 
love. It cannot tolerate the thought of its own 
end. "It announces itself as an eternal thing." 
The spontaneous forms it assumes in language put 
it outside all limitations of time. It takes us over 
into the field of absolute existence, and says : Here 
is native ground ; I cannot die ; if I perish I am no 
longer love, but misery. Love has but one symbol 
in language — forever; its logic is, there is no 
death. 

" What vaster dream can hit the mood 
Of love on earth ? " 

6. There are in man latent powers, and others 
talf revealed, for which human life offers no ade- 
quate explanation. Worship demands for its justi- 



244 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

fication a broader field than this life. Time might 
possibly explain obedience, but not rapture ; rever- 
ence or dread, but not the longing of the soul after 
God. There is within us a strange sense of expect- 
ancy. As Fichte says : " My mind can take no hold 
of the present world, nor rest in it for a moment, 
but my whole nature rushes on with irresistible force 
towards a future and better state of being." A di- 
vine discontent is wrought into us, — divine, because 
it attends our highest faculties. It is true that one 
who has reached the higher grades of life has learned 
not to fret against time, but it is equally true that 
he is not content with time. The repose of the 
greater spirits is not acquiescence in the allotments 
of time, but the conscious possession of eternal life. 
Time and mind are not truly correlated. Hence 
the delight we take in all symbols of vastness and 
power. The child claps its hands as it looks upon 
the sea and hears its "wild uproar," — feeling a 
secret kinship with it. The peace brought by the 
mountains is but the content of the mind in having 
found a somewhat truer measure of its own vast- 
ness. The repose of the soul when night reveals 
the immensity of the universe, springs from its con- 
tact with a truer symbol of itself than the day 
affords. Hence, in the night, all the passions of 
the soul have greater sweep ; it is then we pray, 
that inspirations breathe through us, that imagina- 
tion opens widest her doors ; the upper deeps of 
space call to the deeps within. I would not weaken 
what I believe to be sound argument by any admix- 
ture of mere sentiment. I refer therefore, in the 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 245 

soberest and severest way, to those blind emotions 
that fill the mind whenever we listen to the music 
of the masters, or look upon true art, or in any way 
come in contact with what is highest and best. So 
far as they are translatable into thought, they assert 
a perfection and a life of which this is but a fore- 
taste. So also the wind blowing through reeds 
upon the margin of a lake or the branches of moun- 
tain pines, or perchance over grasses that cover the 
graves of the dead, has a Memnonian tone that fore- 
tells the dawn of an eternal day. The perfect of 
whatever sort, whether the purity of a flower, or 
the harmony of sounds, or the perfection of char- 
acter, awakens a kindred sense within us that is the 
denial of all limitations. 

7. The imagination carries with it a plain inti- 
mation of a larger sphere than the present. It is 
difficult to conceive why this power of broadening 
our actual realm is given to us, if it has not some 
warrant in fact. If this world is all, an intense 
perception of it would seem to be of more value 
than any imagining of what is not and cannot be. 
But our minds are not set more to a realization of 
world-facts than to dreams of what is possible. How 
blind were the earlier civilizations to the material 
world while they sang their great poems and built 
their still enduring philosophies. The most natural 
thing the mind does, is to break through its visible 
barrier and fall to enlarging its domains. It finds 
itself in a cell, it builds a palace ; roofed over and 
vralled in, but will own no limits save the infinite 
spaces of heaven. The imagination is plainly the 



246 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

open door of the mind by whicli it escapes its lim* 
itations, but into what does it open, illusion or 
reality ? 

8. The same course of thought applies to the 
moral nature. It has been claimed by some that 
they could have made a better universe. An auda- 
cious critic has asserted that he could have done 
this very thing, made a better world, as La Place 
said he could have constructed a better planetary 
system. When asked how he would alter the pres- 
ent order, he replied, " I should make health catch- 
ing instead of disease ; " a very bright answer, but 
its wit is not so great as its apparent wisdom. Any 
mind at once says. Why not ? The critic is not far 
wrong, if this world is the only theatre of human 
life. It is true that if the element of disease were 
taken out of life, there would go out with it that 
strength that comes through struggle with adverse 
conditions ; if we had not disease to contend with, 
we should have instead mental weakness. And if 
health were contagious, instead of being the result 
of virtue and wisdom, we should have so much less 
wisdom and virtue. A South Sea Islander does not 
trouble himself to make bread when he can pluck 
it from the trees ; and a man would not question 
his mind or conscience in regard to health if he 
could secure it by contagion ; hence mind and con- 
science would be feeble so far as they depended 
upon the discipline of health-seeking. But, after 
all, this critic of eternal Providence is not far 
wrong, if all this struggle with disease, and other 
great evils, have their only reward in this life. 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 247 

Time is not long enough to compensate man for 
so mighty conflicts. It is not presumptuous, 
however, to say that man could have been better 
made, if he is not to live after death ; this one life 
of earth would be better if his moral nature were 
emptied of the greater part of its contents, and their 
place filled by instincts. A round of utilitarian 
duties, of low prudencies and calculations covering 
the brief span of existence, would be the highest 
wisdom. If this life is all, we are over-freighted 
in our moral nature, like a ship with the greater 
part of its cargo in the bows, ever drenched with 
the bitter waters of the sea, instead of floating 
freely and evenly upon them. If this life is all, 
there is no place for such a faculty as conscience 
with its lash of remorse in one hand, and its peace 
like a river, in the other. It is out of proportion 
to its relations. It is like setting a great engine to 
propel a pleasure-boat, or like building a great ship 
to sail across a little lake. A strong, well grounded 
instinct, that led us to seek the good and avoid the 
bad, as animals avoid noxious food, would be a 
better endowment than conscience, unless it has 
some more enduring field than this from which to 
reap. The step from instinct to freedom and con- 
science, is a step from time to eternity. Conscience 
is not truly correlated to human life. The ethical 
implies the eternal. 

Let us now turn from human nature to the divine 
nature, where we shall find a like, but immeasur- 
ably clearer, group of intimations. Assuming, what 
no intelligent skepticism now denies, the theistio 



248 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

conception of God as infinite and perfect in char- 
acter, this conception is thrown into confusion if 
there is no immortality for man. 

1. There is failure in the higher purposes of God 
respecting the race ; good ends are indicated but 
not reached. Man was made for happiness, but the 
race is not happy. Man was made for intelligence, 
but the race is ignorant. Man was made for social 
order, but war is his habit. He was made for vir- 
tue, but the race is vicious. Only now and then 
does one fulfill the evident ends for which he was 
made. As a whole, there is the direst failure, and 
unless there is another field where these hideous 
wrongs and lacks may be set right, we must con- 
clude that a wise and good God organized society 
upon the plan of failure, with the result of immeas- 
urable, hopeless misery. The possibility of ultimate 
earthly success does not lessen the weight of this 
fearful conclusion. What is the perfection of some 
far off generation to us and to our generation ? 

2. The fact that justice is not done upon the 
earth involves us in the same confusion. That jus- 
tice will sometime be done gives us peace ; that 
justice should never be done throws the soul into 
a chaos of endless cursing and bitterness. The 
slighting of love can be endured, but that right 
should go forever undone is that against which the 
soul, by its constitution, must forever protest. The 
remonstrance — it was not a question but a remon- 
strance — of Abram with God : " Shall not the 
judge of all the earth do right?" is the privilege 
of every soul, not an expectation but a demand. 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 249 

The sentiment of righteousness underlies all else in 
man and in God, for we cannot conceive of God 
without attributing it to Him. But justice is not 
done upon the earth, and is never done, if there be 
no hereafter. Multitudes suffer what they do not 
deserve, incurring the penalties of vices and crimes 
not their own. It is the nature of certain vices to 
yield their bitterest results in posterity, the offender 
himself escaping with but little suffering. Here 
justice is blind indeed, failing both to inflict and 
to spare. A babe that suffers from an inherited 
vice, and dies in moral purity, might pass to noth- 
ingness, but the injustice could never perish. It 
would endure, a blot on the white robe of divine 
righteousness; it would forever prevent the uni- 
verse from being a moral order. Were there no 
God, the wrong would pass into the elements to 
work eternal discord ; it would haunt the ages ; for 
if there is no immortality for the soul, there is im- 
mortality for wrong till it is set right. The martyr 
dying in the arena, while the tyrant jests above him, 
is an eternal injustice if there be no future. If all 
the unjustly treated of the earth were to pass before 
us, — the oppressed, the persecuted, the victims of 
unjust wars, of priestcraft, of enforced ignorance, of 
false opinion, of bad laws, of social vices, — the sad 
procession would number well-nigh the whole. Shel- 
ley calls this "a wrong world ; " St. Paul, " a present 
evil world." They saw it alike, but the Apostle 
put into the word present a hope that the wrong 
and evil world will at last yield to a right world. 
3. Man is less perfect than the rest of creation, 



250 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

and relatively to himself, is less perfect in his 
higher than in his lower faculties. So marked are 
these facts as to suggest a failure of power or wis- 
dom on the part of God to carry out the best part 
of his plan ; which is actually the position taken by 
John Stuart Mill. And Mr. Mill is right unless a 
broader sphere than this world is allowed for the 
development of man. In the animal races, there is 
but little falling short of typical perfection, but the 
perfect type of humanity transcends experience, and 
can be known only by an ideal projection of hints 
and fragments drawn from the worthiest and great- 
est. How perfect also is the material universe, and 
with what harmony it " still quires to the young- 
eyed Cherubim ; " what exact obedience, and hence 
what order, in all realms save our own, which is the 
highest. What conclusion can we draw but that 
the Creator succeeded in his lower works but failed 
in his higher, — a conclusion so monstrous as to 
render plausible any theory of human destiny that 
avoids it ; for a Creator is responsible for his crea- 
tion ; and every act of creation must be justified by 
its wisdom. There can be no justification of a cre- 
ation that is characterized by failure. 

4. As love is the strongest proof of immortality 
on the man-ward side of the argument, so is it on 
ihe God- ward side. Divine love and human love 
are alike, and act alike. Love demands sympathy ; 
it is enduring by its own nature. Absolute and 
infinite love must love forever. Love also, by its 
nature, suffers from anything that hinders its ex- 
pression, or brings it to an end. It is so with man ; 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 251 

it must be so with God in a more absolute sense. 
But God lias set us in relations of love to Himself, 
his love for us being the basis and reason of our 
love for Him. Life has no higher end than to come 
into a conscious love of God. Grant now, for a 
moment, that this life is the end of all, — what sor- 
row does God inflict upon Himself by allowing the 
objects of his love to perish ! Nay, what more than 
sorrow, what folly to train men to love, to lead them 
through years up to the point of mutual recognition 
and sympathy only to snuff them out of existence ! 
What then are we but bubbles floating on the 
summer air of existence, reflecting for a few fleet- 
ing moments the image of our Creator, and bursting 
to destroy both ourselves and the image we reflect ! 
Why should love allow the end of what it loves ? 
If it cannot prevent the end why does it create? 
It is as though a father should rear children till 
their love for him had bloomed into full sweet- 
ness, and then dig graves into which he thrusts 
them while their hearts are springing to his, and 
his name is trembling upon lips that he smoth- 
ers with eternal dust. It is related of an Arab 
chief, whose laws forbade the rearing of his female 
offspring, that the only tears he ever shed, were 
when his daughter brushed the dust from his beard 
as he buried her in a living grave. But where are 
the tears of God as he thrusts back into eternal 
stillness the hands that are stretched out to Him in 
dying faith ? If death ends life, what is this world 
but an ever-yawning grave in which the loving 
God buries his children with hopeless sorrow, mock- 



252 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

ing at once their love and hope, and every attribute 
of his own nature. Again we say, the logic of love 
upon the divine as upon the human side, is, there is 
no death. Divine as well as human love has but 
one symbol in language — forever. 

The probabilities might be greatly multiplied. 
If stated in full, they would exhaust the whole 
nature of God and man. Immortality has been 
named " the great prophecy of reason," — a phrase 
that is in itself an argument. We cannot look into 
ourselves without finding it. The belief is a part of 
the contents of human nature : take it away, and its 
most unifying bond is broken ; it has no longer an 
order or a relation ; the higher faculties are with- 
out function : eyes, but nothing to see ; hands, but 
nothing to lay hold of ; feet, but no path to tread ; 
w^ings, but no air to uphold them, and no heaven to 
fly into. To doubt immortality is to reverse in- 
stinct; to reject the loftiest verdict of reason; to 
withhold from humanity its inspiration ; to blast 
the only hope of mankind. It is a lapse, a regres* 
sion ; it crowds man back into his animal nature, 
and makes him a thing to eat and drink and perish. 
It cuts every strand that binds man to God, and 
destroys all conceptions of God. In place of the 
moral and spiritual truths that underlie and feed 
the life of society, it puts a creed of negation and 
despair : — 

" The pillared firmament but rottenness, 
And earth's base built on stubble." 

Let us take heed then how we allow ourselves 
to think on this subject except with the utmost 



IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 253 

solemnity and carefulness. Let no presumptions 
against it stand till they have been tested and 
weighed by absolute knowledge. And let not the 
reasons for it be given up till we have some other 
theory of man and his destiny that shall clothe him 
with equal glory, and secure for him an equal bless- 
edness ; and if we cannot solve immortality as a 
problem, let us cherish it as a hope, holding that 
such a hope is better than the wisest perplexity. 



IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE 

CHRIST. 



"The faith of immortality depends on a sense of it begotten, not 
on an argument for it concluded." — Dr. Bushnell, Moral Uses, page 
16. 

"It would seem that the highest and holiest soul carries with it like 
an atmosphere a perfect serenity, a sense of present eternity, a presage 
of immortality." — George S. Merriam, The Way of Life^ page 156. 

" But souls that of his own good life partake, 
He loves as his own self ; dear as his eye 
They are to Him ; He '11 never them forsake; 
When they shall die, then God Himself shall die ; 
They live, they live in blest eternity." 

Henry Mosb. 



IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE 

CHRIST. 



"Because I live, ye shall live also." — St. John, xiv. 19. 

Science may throw no barrier in the way of be- 
lief in immortality ; nature and the heart of man 
may suggest clear intimations of a future life ; hu- 
man society may demand another life to complete 
the suggestions and fill up the lacks of this life; but, 
for some reason, all such proof fails to satisfy us. 
It holds the mind, but does not minister to the 
heart. It is sufficient to extinguish the horror of 
great darkness that falls upon us at the thought of 
death, but it does not kindle the sense of life into 
a flame of joy. It is a matter of experience that 
the faith in immortality that is based upon the logic 
of our own nature and conditions, is not a restful 
faith. It is forever going over the proofs to see if 
there be no flaw in them ; it is startled by the new 
discoveries of science ; it grows weak before the 
pressure of the physical world and its laws; it is 
ever haunted by questions : after all, may not the 
mind be as the body and perish with it ? — is not 
this law of waste and destruction that wars contin- 
ually against life and everywhere conquers it, 
stronger than life ? — stronger in the visible world. 

17 



258 IMMOETALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 

may it not be stronger in the invisible world ? And 
so this faith stands with a question upon its lips, 
tremulous at times, peering into the future with a 
troubled gaze, hoping rather than believing, and 
passing into the future with the peace of resigna- 
tion rather than the joy of assurance. 

It is noticeable also that the faith of natural evi- 
dence awakens no joyful enthusiasm in masses of 
mankind. Plato and Cicero discourse of immortal- 
ity with a certain degree of warmth, but their coun- 
trymen get little comfort from it. Their joys and 
hopes still play about the present life ; death is still 
terrible ; mere continuance of existence yields no 
inspiring joy. The reason is evident when we refer 
to our own experience. The mere fact that I shall 
live to-morrow, does not sensibly move me ; it 
awakes no raptures ; it does not even awaken re- 
flection. Something must be joined with existence 
before it gets power. Or, to come at once to the 
point, immortality must be united with character 
in order to solace and inspire men. Or, striking to 
the very heart of the matter, immortality must be 
connected with the living God, in order to be a liv- 
ing and moving fact. 

We will now consider the way in which Christ 
treated the subject ; and so I trust we shall come to 
see how it is that a Christian faith in immortality 
differs in power from any otherwise suggested. 

When Christ entered on his ministry of teaching, 
he found certain doctrines existing in Jewish theol- 
ogy ; they were either imperfect or germinal truths. 
He found a doctrine of God, partial in conception ; 



IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 259 

He perfected it by revealing the divine fatherhood. 
He found a doctrine of sin and righteousness turn- 
ing upon external conduct ; He transferred it to the 
heart and spirit. He found a doctrine of judgment 
as a single future event ; He made it present and on- 
going. He found a doctrine of reward and punish- 
ment, the main feature of which was a place in the 
under and upper worlds where pleasure was im- 
parted and pain inflicted ; He transferred it to 
the soul, and made the pleasure and pain to pro- 
ceed from within the man, and to depend upon his 
character. He found a doctrine of immortality, 
held as mere future existence ; He transformed the 
doctrine, even if He did not supplant it, by calling 
it life^ and connecting it with character. His treat- 
ment of this doctrine was not so much corrective, as 
accretive. He accepts immortality, but He adds to 
it character. He puts in abeyance the element of 
time, continuance, and substitutes quality or char- 
acter as its main feature. Hence He never uses any 
word corresponding to immortality (which is a 
mere negation — unmortal), but always speaks of 
life. The continuance of existence is merely an in- 
cident, in his mind, to the fact of life. It follows 
inevitably, but is not the main feature of the truth. 
For a moment, we will speak of the subject with- 
out regard to this distinction. We find Christ hold- 
ing to immortality ; He does not assert but assumes 
it, and not only assumes it, but at once begins to 
build upon the assumption. He never makes a 
straight assertion of future existence except once, 
when the Sadducees, pressing him with a quibbling 



260 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 

argument against the resurrection, are led away 
from their point to the matter of future life itself, 
and are confounded by the simple remark, that when 
they speak of the God of the patriarchs, they con- 
fess that the patriarchs are alive because God is the 
God of the living and not of the dead, that is, the 
non-existent. Elsewhere, He simply assumes a fu- 
ture life. But an assumption is often the strongest 
kind of argument. It implies such conviction in 
the mind of the speaker that there is no need of 
proof. Christ calmly takes it for granted that 
there is a proper field for the play of his truth. He 
will not stop to prove that such duties as self-denial, 
•love, faith in God, obedience, prayer, are based upon 
a future existence. They presuppose it, and of 
themselves are a sujficient argument for it. With- 
out it, how inconclusive all his teachings become, 
how meagre, how untrue ! Why put men under a 
law of self-denial that may even involve death, as it 
did in his own case, if death ends all ? Why reveal 
to men the powers of eternity, if they are the crea- 
tures of time ? Why mock them with revelations 
of the upper world, if they are never to enter it ? 
And if Christ perished at death, what a jangle of in- 
consistency his own life becomes ? His dying words, 
" Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," be- 
come mere dying breath wasted in empty space. 

In Christ's own mind, the intense and absolute 
consciousness of God carries with it immortality, as 
it does the whole body of his truth. Hence, if I 
were to construct one all-embracing argument for 
immortality, and were I to put it into one word, it 



IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 261 

would be — Grod. The last word of science in re- 
gard to the physical universe is that it is probably 
limited ; there is an outer edge beyond which is 
empty space ; within this limited universe, at its 
centre, is a world around which all others revolve, 
the sun of suns, the centre of all systems, whose po- 
tency reaches to the outermost verge, holding them 
steady to their courses, a world invisible perhaps to 
us but felt in the harmony with which our planet 
fulfills its appointed journeys. It is not otherwise 
in morals. Given the fact of God, and all other 
truth takes its place without question. The worlds 
of fact and duty, the meteoric flights of genius, the 
nebulous clouds of speculation, the burning suns of 
devotion, the cold, unlighted realms of physics — all 
fall into true place and function when they centre 
about God. A belief in God clarifies all subjects at 
once. There is no longer such a thing as mystery 
when God is known. Hence, when there is an 
overpowering, all-possessing sense of God as there 
was in Christ, truth takes on absolute forms ; hence 
it was that He spoke with authority. His vision of 
God made his perception of truth absolutely per- 
fect; hence his teachings are beyond criticism. It 
is the marvel of the world that it has never been 
able to lay its finger convincingly upon a weak spot 
in all the various utterances of the Christ, nor even 
show that He did not speak with utter and absolute 
knowledge of every theme he touched. He saw the 
whole of every truth, and saw it in the clear light 
of absolute vision. It is not necessary to refer this 
to his essential divinity ; it is due rather to his ut- 



262 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 

ter and perfect sense of God ; for God is light and 
in Him is no darkness at all. When we come into 
that light, all darkness of doubt and mystery flies 
away, and we know all truth even as we are known. 
It was Christ's realization of the living God that 
rendered his own conviction of eternal life so ab- 
solute. 

We can but notice how grandly Christ reposed 
upon this fact of immortal life. He feels no need 
of examining the evidences, or balancing proofs ; 
no doubts overcloud his faith ; death offers no hin- 
drance ; it is but a sleep. He regards nothing from 
the stand-point of time or this life, except worldly 
work. He stands steadily upon life^ life endless by 
its own nature. He cast himself upon this eternal 
fact of life and immortality without hesitation or 
reserve, and died with Paradise open to his sight. 
Death was no leap in the dark to Him ; it was not 
even a land of shadows : it was simply a door lead- 
ing into another mansion of God's great house. 

It is a proper question to ask here, " Is it prob- 
able that Christ was mistaken ? Is it possible that 
his faith in immortality was but an intense form of 
a prevailing superstition ? " If we could find any 
weakness elsewhere in his teachings, there would 
be ground for such questions. But as a moral 
teacher He stands at the head, unimpeachable in 
the minutest particular. His wisdom was the finest, 
his judgment the truest, his analysis of life the 
deepest, his assertion of duty the most authoritative 
that human ears have ever heard. Is it probable 
that, true in all else, He was at fault in this one 



IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 263 

respect ? Is it probable that this faultless structure 
of harmonious and self-witnessing truth is built 
upon a phantasm, cosmos resting upon chaos ; that 
a body of truth all interwoven and suffused with 
life is based upon an illusion of life ? Here is 
where personally I rest. I see nature devouring 
life, a law of death reigning everywhere ; I see the 
star of life rise and set ; I see life yielding to silence, 
and all that held it going to mix with the elements; 
I look into the unseen world, but I get no report or 
vision of it ; I gaze into the infinite heavens and 
am shriveled to nothingness ; I look into the in- 
finity of animal life with its law of destruction and 
death and I say. Is it not so with man ? But I 
turn from the doubts thus suggested to Christ and 
they vanish like morning mists. Dr. Arnold de- 
fined faith as " reason leaning on God." So here, 
we do not abdicate reason before mere words, but 
suffer it to lean on one to whom the Father has 
showed all things. If one tells me ninety-nine 
truths, I will trust him in the hundredth, especially 
if it is involved in those before. Build me a column 
perfect in base and body, and I shall know if the 
capital is true. When the clearest eyes that ever 
looked on this world and into the heavens, and the 
keenest judgment that ever weighed human life, 
and the purest heart that ever throbbed with hu- 
man sympathy, tells me, especially if He tells it 
by assumption, that man is immortal, I repose on 
his teaching in perfect trust. This is the highest 
possible exercise of reason, for that is not reason 
that isolates itself from the wisest and best, and 



264 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 

says, I will solve my problems alone. It is reason 
to see with the wise, and to feel with the good. 
Still another distinction must be made ; we do not 
accept immortality because Jesus, the wise, young 
Jew, wove it into his precepts, but because the 
Christ, the Son of God and of man, — Humanity 
revealing Deity, — makes it a part of that order of 
human history best named as the Reconciliation of 
the world to God. Immortality is not an aspira- 
tion of the devout, nor a guess of the wise, nor a 
conclusion of the logicians, but is the centre and 
soul of God's order in the world ; and the achieve- 
ment of a faith in it is wrought out by an under- 
standing of this order, and by obedience to its 
eternal laws. 

We may now return to our main point and con- 
sider how Christ taught immortality. As I have 
said. He makes no straight assertion of it, but as- 
sumes it. He speaks rather of life, and life implies 
immortality. He does not think of it as a future, 
but as a present fact. The element of time does 
not seem to have entered much into his thoughts. 
He was too wholly at one with God to think of 
past and future. As time, in the divine mind, is 
an eternal now, so it seems to have been with 
Christ. We do not find Him peering into the ages 
upon ages of futurity, and drawing comfort from 
the thought that He is to live on and on throughout 
them all. Neither an infinite nor a perfect being 
regards time as we do. If the cup of life is full, 
there is little sense of past or future ; the present is 
enough. To dwell on the future is an impeach* 



IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 265 

menfc of the present. Hence, a little child whose 
angel still beholds the face of the Father, does not 
repine over the past, or sigh for the future. The 
very law of innocence and perfection, whether in 
child or angel or God or perfect man, tends to ex- 
clude the sense of time. Continuance becomes a 
mere incident ; the main and absorbing thought 
is quality of life. When Christ speaks of eternal 
life. He does not mean future endless existence ; this 
may be involved, but it is an inference or secondary 
thought ; He means instead fullness or perfection of 
life. That it will go on forever, is a matter of 
course, but it is not the important feature of the 
truth. 

And thus we are brought to the fundamental fact 
that Christ connected life or immortality with char- 
acter. Life, as mere continuance of being, is not 
worth thinking about. He does not withhold future 
existence from the wicked and unbelieving, but 
plainly regards it of little account. Of what value 
is the mere adding of days to days if they are full 
of sin ? Practically such life is death, and so He 
names it. Life is not the living on of a wicked 
soul through endless ages. Forever to hold a con- 
scious being together as an organism, is not a real 
immortality. We may go even farther in this direc- 
tion ; there can be no real and abiding faith in im- 
mortality until it becomes wedded to the spiritual 
nature. So long as we hold it as a mere persuasion 
of the mind, or as an idea, it is subject to the chances 
of an idea ; it meets the challenge of science ; it 
ebbs and flows with the alternations of our mental 



266 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 

clearness ; it is oyerclouded by exhalations that rise 
out of the physical order to which we are linked. 
Hence I would not attempt to convince one skep- 
tical of immortality through his reason alone. But 
when the spiritual nature is brought into exercise, 
it generates not only a faith in eternal life, but rea- 
sons for it. When life begins to be true, it an* 
nounces itself as an eternal thing to the mind ; as 
a caged bird when let loose into the sky might say : 
Now I know that my wings are made to beat the 
air in flight ; and no logic could ever persuade the 
bird that it was not designed to fly ; but when caged, 
it might have doubted, at times, as it beat the bars 
of its prison with unavailing stroke, if its wings were 
made for flight. So it is not until a man begins 
to use his soul aright that he knows for what it is 
made. When he puts his life into harmony with 
God's laws ; when he begins to pray ; when he 
clothes himself with the graces of Christian faith 
and conduct — love, humility, self-denial, service ; 
when he begins to live out of, and unto, his spiritual 
nature, he begins to realize what life is, — a reality 
that death and time cannot touch. But when his 
life is made up of the world, it is not strange that 
it should seem to himself as liable to perish with 
the world. Hence we are not to regard the prevail- 
ing general belief in future existence as a genuine 
faith in immortality ; this is the product alone of 
spiritual life. Christ made no recognition of im. 
mortality, except in connection with faith, and by 
faith He meant the result of faith, righteous char- 
acter. Those who believe have everlasting life. 



IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 267 

Others may exist, but existence is not life. Others 
may continue to exist, but continuance is not im- 
mortality. Here we find the significance, and the 
self-witnessing reality of the miracles in which 
Christ raised the dead. They are specimens of his 
universal work, a dramatic setting forth of the pro- 
cess of life He is bringing to light, an overflow of 
the fullness of life behind the veil, dawn-streaks of a 
sun not yet risen. But these pre-resurrections, these 
interruptions of the course and order of death, are 
wrought only in an atmosphere of faith ; and thus 
He asserts that life has no value, except as it is 
linked with goodness. Of what avail to restore one 
to life, unless it be to life indeed I To have brought 
forward these images of the resurrection upon a 
background of sin and unbelief, would have been a 
discord ; the drama of eternal righteousness that He 
is enacting in living ways would thus have no unity. 
Not even in hint, or symbol, not even to do a work 
of apparent mercy, will He deal with life, except in 
connection with morality. He will have nothing to 
do with bare existence, — that stands forever fixed 
in the sure order of creation ; when it is under sin. 
He will not recognize it as life. To lift men out of 
existence into life, was his mission. 

Christ not only gave us the true law of immortal- 
ity, but was Himself a perfect illustration of it, and 
even named Himself by it — the Life. It is a great 
thing for us that this truth of immortality has been 
put into actual fact. Human nature is crowded 
with hints and omens of it, but prophecy does not 
convince till it is fulfilled. And from the divine 



268 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 

side also we get assurances of endless life ; but in 
so hard a matter we are like Thomas, who needed 
the sight and touch to assure him. And in Christ 
we have both, — the human omen and the divine 
promise turned into fact. In some of the cathedrals 
of Europe, on Christmas-eve, two small lights, typi- 
fying the divine and human nature, are gradually 
made to approach one another until they meet and 
blend, forming a bright flame. Thus, in Christ, we 
have the light of two worlds thrown upon human 
destiny. Death, as the extinction of being, cannot 
be associated with Him ; He is life, — its fullness 
and perfection, and perfect life must be stronger than 
death. The whole bearing of Christ towards death, 
and his treatment of it, was as one superior to it, 
and as having no lot nor part in it. He will indeed 
bow his head and cease to breathe in obedience to 
the physical laws of the humanity He shares, but 
already He enters the gates of Paradise, not alone 
but leading a penitent child of humanity by the 
hand. And in order that we may know He simply 
changed worlds. He comes back and shows Himself 
alive ; for He is not here in the world simply to 
assert truth, but to enact it. And still further to 
show us how phantasmal death is. He finally departs 
in all the fullness of life, simply drawing about Him- 
self the thin drapery of a cloud. 

I cannot close without directing your attention to 
a lesson implied in all that has been said, namely, 
a true and satisfying sense of immortality must be 
achieved. It cannot be taken second-hand. We 
cannot read it in the pages of a book, whether of 



IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 269 

nature or inspiration. We cannot even look upon 
the man Jesus issuing from the tomb, and draw 
from thence a faith that yields peace. There must 
be fellowship with the Christ of the resurrection 
before we can feel its power ; in other words, we 
must get over upon the divine side of life before we 
can be assured of eternal life. A full predication 
of immortality can only be made through the moral 
and spiritual faculties. It is because we are, in 
part, under the dominion of the world, and worldly 
sense, and worldly maxims, that we doubt, or see 
dimly ; we are like Milton's " tawny lion " in crea- 
tion, fully formed in head, and " pawing to get free 
his hinder parts," which are still one with the dust 
of the earth ; or like the Sphinx, of human head 
and the body of an animal, — 

" Gazing right onward with calm, eternal eyes ; " 

intelligent of eternity, yet linked to perishable na- 
ture. And so there are two voices within us : the 
voice of our earthly nature and the voice of the 
spirit, and they utter conflicting words. It is our 
business in life to silence one, and give full ear to 
the other. By humility, by self-denial, by unworld- 
liness, by spiritual thought, by devout aspiration, 
by silent communion with God, we grow into an 
abiding sense of eternal life. " Join thyself," says 
Augustine, "to the eternal God, and thou wilt be 
eternal." Just in the degree in which we attain 
height of spiritual nature are we able to predicate 
immortality of ourselves. It is not a thing an- 
nounced by any " Lo here " or " Lo there," but is 



270 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 

within us, the fruit of faith, the achievemerj,^ of. 
spiritual endeavor. It will be strong or Treak, 
steady or fluctuating, just in the degree in which 
our life is rooted in the eternal verities of God's 
kingdom. Yet it will ever be a matter of degree 
so long as faith is weighted with present conditions ; 
a matter of degree, yet doubt ever lessening to the 
vanishing point of nothingness, and faith growing to- 
wards the fullness of utter knowledge ; as one climb- 
ing a mountain sees an ever-widening horizon, till, 
upon the summit, he beholds the circle of visible 
things melt into the infinity of space. 



THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OP 
DEATH. 



" 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
Oh, life, not death, for which we pant; 
More life, and fuller, that I want." 

Tennyson, The Two Voices. 

**It can hardly be gain for us to die, till it is Christ for us to live." 
Pees. Bascom, Philosophy of Religion, page 187. 

" Sleep is a death; O make me try, 
By sleeping, what it is to die : 
And as gently lay my head 
On my grave as now my bed. 
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me 
Awake again at last with Thee. 
And thus assured, behold I lie 
Securely, or to wake or die." 

SiE Thomas Beowne, Evening Hymn. 

*' living will that shalt endure 
' When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
Rise in the spiritual rock, 
Flow through our deeds and make them pure, 

** That we may lift from out the dust 
A voice as unto him that hears, 
A cry above the conquer'd years 
To one that with us works, and trust, 

" With faith that comes of self-control, 
The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved, 
And all we flow from, soul in soul." 

In Memoriam, cxxxi. 



THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 



"Jesus said unto her: I am the resurrection and the life; he that be- 
lieveth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth 
and believeth on me shall never die." — St. John, xi. 25, 26. 

It is only from great inspired natures that we 
hear so contradictory words as these. It is not 
until we rise somewhat above the level of ordinary 
thought, that we perceive the doubleness, or two- 
foldness, that invests life, the assertion of which 
yields apparent opposition in language. In one 
breath, Christ says that if a man dies and believes 
in Him, he shall live ; and in the next breath He 
says, that whosoever liveth and believeth on Him 
shall never die. Language could not be made more 
violently contradictory ; believers shall never die ; 
dead believers shall live ; yet every docile reader 
of the Bible, coming on such a passage, feels that 
it contains a truth too subtle to be grasped with 
words. Language attempts it, but is turned hither 
and thither in vain attempts to embody the mean- 
ing, and the result is wild and contradictory state- 
ments. But the very ambiguity of the language is 
an indication of the value of the truth hidden un- 
derneath it. When the strata of the rocks are 
twisted and upturned, the miner looks for gold, 
deeming that in the convulsions that so disposed 

18 



274 TRE Christ's treatment of death. 

them, a vein of the precious metal may have been 
thrown up from the lower deep. 

And not only is there a certain blindness in the 
treatment of the subject, but the subject itself is a 
mystery. We see but one side, or, as it were, the 
gate-way ; beyond, all is uncertainty and darkness. 
But this blindness and apparent contradiction has 
its ground in us, in our feeble capacity to under- 
stand and to believe. To the Christ it was clear 
and radiant truth. He was dealing with the actual 
fact of death. Women were weeping for their dead 
brother before him. It was no time for fine, mys- 
tical talk, for ambiguous words of comfort, and it 
was this very desire to administer a higher comfort, 
that made his words seem strange and doubtful. 
In order to get at their meaning, we must keep in 
mind that Christ was drawing comfort for these 
afflicted friends, not from the old sources, but from 
Himself. Martha has expressed her faith in the 
common doctrine of the resurrection at the last 
day. Christ does not deny nor assent to it, but 
passes over it, as though it had little power to 
assuage the actual suffering of death. If it be true, 
it is a far-off event, ages hence, at the last day ; it 
hardly touches the present fact of death. It has 
nothing definite, immediate, or specially consolatory 
in its character, being simply an affirmation of fu- 
ture existence. So little power had it, that Mar- 
tha did not think of it, till led to it by Christ's 
question. She doubtless shared the vague belief of 
the Jews, that " her brother would ascend some 
time or other on angels' wings into a place somet 



THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 275 

where above tlie stars ; " but how could that com- 
fort her ? She could not bridge the gulf of time 
and space between herself and that event. She 
could get from it no assurance that her brother 
would ever be known by her ; that the ties sun- 
dered by death would ever be joined again. There 
her brother lay in the tomb, dead, fast passing to 
corruption, soon to become as the dust of the earth, 
and there he would lie for ages, dead ; herself soon 
to die and lie beside him, and sleep the long sleep 
of utter forgetfulness. What comfort is there here 
for yearning human love that longs for nearness 
and response? God's love may wait patient through 
ages, because ages are nothing to Him, but human 
love is impatient, because it is human and under 
finite conditions. We cannot endure that the object 
of our love should be beyond our knowledge and 
reach, and the bitterness of death springs from this 
fact of utter separation and apparent loss. A fu- 
ture, general resurrection, is only a slight mitigation 
of this suffering, because its operation is so distant 
and vague. Our little ones die — children that we 
scarcely endure to have out of our sight ; the winter 
day seems long if they are absent, and the journey 
wears tediously away that separates us from their 
caresses ; when these die, it is small comfort to 
know that ages upon ages hence, when great gulfs 
of change and place are passed, they and we shall 
live again. Instead of dwelling on that, we cling 
to the form and mementos spared by death; we 
visit their graves and keep alive the past instead of 
making alive the present. Christ, there by the 



276 THE Christ's treatment of death. 

tomb of Lazarus, strove to give these mourners a 
more substantial comfort than these far-away fan- 
cies of the common tradition. 

He did this by a word and an act, — the one to 
show how true was the other ; but we will speak 
only of the word. 

1. His first purpose was to get their minds away 
from death ; He will not let them think of it, but 
gives them instead life^ and crowds it upon them in 
all ways possible. 

There is but one natural fact to which Christ 
showed antipathy. We have no indication that 
climate, or storm, or heat, the weariness of deserts, 
or the roughness of mountains, moved Him to any 
word or thought of dissatisfaction. There was no 
impatience with youth ; no sadness over age. He 
did not sigh over the brevity of life, or human 
frailty, or the variety of allotments. So far as we 
can gather. He was in profound sympathy with the 
natural order of the world, and of human life, save 
only in respect of its end. Death itself is a natural 
and fit event, and must have been regarded by Christ 
with no more aversion than the night or the tem- 
pest. But the fact had been so sunk in its associa- 
tions, and identified with fears so horrible and con- 
ceptions so false ; it stood for so much that was an- 
tagonistic to Himself, that He regarded it with aver- 
sion, and shrank from all mention or recognition of 
it. He set the whole weight of his thought and 
speech against what was known as death. There is 
a fine, illuminating significance in the fact of his in- 
disposition to use the word. We observe in ourselves 



THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 277 

a. reluctance to utter certain words because their as- 
sociations are so bad or painful. The word is an 
open gate through which all the evil and bitterness 
it represents pours in upon us, and we seek for am- 
biguous and milder phrases when forced to utter- 
ance. And the finer the nature, the keener is the 
sensitiveness to such association of speech and fact. 
Death, as it was commonly regarded, was a hateful 
thing to Christ, and He would not name it. And 
so He said that the daughter of Jairus was not 
dead, but asleep. The mortal change had come, 
but that which the people meant had not come. 
They thought that some dark and dreadful change 
had come upon her spirit; that she had entered 
upon a long and gloomy sleep in the grave ; that a 
cessation of life in its fullness has taken place till 
the last great day. But Christ will not counte- 
nance such views, and says that no such change had 
come : she is rather asleep ; her life itself, in all 
its grand and beautiful functions, is still going on 
aside from the closed eyes and the pulseless form. 
He showed the same reluctance to apply the word 
when Lazarus died, and spoke of him as sleeping^ 
till the dullness of his companions forced him to 
use the ordinary word. He evidently intends to 
teach another use of words as to the close of life, 
to inaugurate another phrase in place of " death." 
The conception He desires to establish is so differ- 
ent, that He clothes it in a new word, instead of 
striving to put a new meaning into an old word. 

Why have we not learned the blessed lesson, or 
rather why have we forgotten it ? for the early be- 



278 THE Christ's treatment of death. 

lievers, fully taught by the resurrection of Christ, 
caught at once the remembered hints, and always 
spoke of physical death as sleep. St. Luke writes 
of Stephen, though his life was "dashed out by 
cruel stones," that he "fell asleep." And St. Paul 
writes many times over of those who have " fallen 
asleep," and St. Peter of the fathers who " fell 
asleep." They cherished the new word with fond- 
ness, wrote it upon their tombs, and devised em- 
blems to set it forth. Even now in the catacombs 
of Rome, may be read such words as these : " Sleep- 
ing in Jesus ; " " He sleeps in peace." Sleep is 
peace ; to sleep in peace, then, how restful I How 
fresh and strong must be the awaking after such 
sleep ! 

If Christ had done nothing more for humanity 
than give to it this word sleep in place of death, 
he would have been the greatest of benefactors. 
To that which seems to us the worst thing He has 
given the best name, and the name is true. It is a 
great thing that we are permitted to take that al- 
most dearest word in our tongue — sleep — and 
give it to death ; sleep that ends our cares and re- 
lieves us from toil, that links day to day and shuts 
out the horror of darkness, that checks with pleas- 
ant suggestion the current of evil, that soothes and 
ends the fever of daily life, that begins in weariness 
and ends in strength, that keeps soul and body quiet 
while God fills again the exhausted lamp of life, 
that lets the mind into the liberty of dreams and 
perhaps suffers it to bathe in the original fountain 
of life; it is no small or unmeaning thing that 



THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 279 

Christ taught us to apply this word to that seeming 
loss and horror hitherto called death. This is not 
sentiment nor poetry, except as sentiment and po- 
etry stand for what is most real and substantial. 
Christ did not utter pleasant deceptions by the 
grave of his friend Lazarus ; He taught new truth 
about death, that it is not what it seems, — a loss 
and horror, a matter of entombment and corruption, 
of ghostly waiting in the under-world, of disem- 
bodied and half-suppressed existence till the last 
great day at the end of the world. He puts all this 
aside, and invests it in a new atmosphere and sur- 
rounds it with different suggestions. It is to Life 
what sleep is to the day. Sleep rests and restores 
the body to a fuller and fresher life. Christ would 
not have called death sleep merely because of its 
external likeness ; his thought struck deeper than 
that. He meant that death does for us what sleep 
does for the body : repairs, invigorates, and repeats 
for us the morning of life. 

Amongst the profoundest words of Shakespeare 
are those in which he speaks of sleep as " great 
Nature's second course." In a profounder sense 
still, the sleep of death ushers in the " second 
course" of nature, even the life that shall never 
know death nor sleep. 

2. His next purpose is to get them to identify 
Himself with the resurrection ; or, rather, to sup- 
plant it and the far-off life it indicates, with Him- 
self and his life. Martha had spoken of a general 
resurrection in the last day — not necessarily a spir^ 
atual fact nor having a spiritual bearing, — a mere 



280 THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 

matter of destiny, like birth and death, a distant 
mysterious event. Christ draws it near, takes it 
out of time, vitalizes it, puts it into the category of 
faith, and connects it with Himself. He says : Do 
not think of the resurrection in that way, as a jBnal, 
world-end event, and thus suffer all the natural 
gloom and bitterness of death ; instead, transfer 
your thoughts on the matter to me ; consider me as 
the resurrection, and that whoever believes in me is 
absolutely beyond the reach of death, as it has been 
hitherto regarded. 

But how is it that believing in Christ thus puts 
us beyond the reach and power of death ? — a fit 
question and capable of answer, for this process has 
a philosophy and traceable order. Some may pre- 
fer to believe that this assurance is of the nature of 
a promise, and that those who believe in Christ are 
greatly strengthened and upheld by Him in the hour 
of death. This is undoubtedly true, but it is the 
small part of a much larger truth. Christ had in 
mind something of greater scope than momentary 
ministration to the dying. This is comparatively a 
small matter ; for how many die instantly ; how 
many sicken and die in utter unconsciousness ; the 
vast majority with benumbed perceptions and sen- 
sibilities. It was doubtless intended we should go 
out of .the world as unconsciously as we came into 
it. It cannot therefore be to meet so rare and brief 
an experience as conscious agony of death that 
Christ makes this statement. The entire truth 
that Christ had in mind was this : that faith in 
Himself, by its own law, works away from death 



THE Christ's treatment of death. 281 

towards life. For, Christ is life ; to believe in a 
person is to become like that person, or one with 
him. Hence, to believe in Christ the Life is to be- 
come a sharer with Him in whatever He is, there- 
fore in his life. We are told that Christ could not 
be holden of death ; faith in Him works toward the 
same freedom. 

The assimilating power of faith, that is, the power 
of faith to make those who believe like that in 
which they believe, is a recognized principle. The 
whole nature follows the faith, and gravitates to- 
wards its object. A moulding process goes on ; 
faith is the workman and the object of faith is the 
pattern. Starting within, down amongst the de- 
sires and affections, it works outward, till the exter- 
nal man becomes in form, feature, and expression 
like the absorbing object. We meet men every- 
day in whose faces we see avarice, lust, or conceit, 
as plainly as if it were imprinted on their foreheads. 
They have so long thought and felt under the 
power of these qualities that they are made over 
into their image. A man who worships money 
comes to wear the likeness of a money-worshiper 
down to the tips of his fingers ; his eyes and nose 
and the very posture of his figure, bear witness to 
the transforming power of his faith. The Hindu 
who worships Brahma sleeping on the stars in im- 
movable calm, gets to wear a fixed expression. The 
mediaeval saints who spent days and nights in con- 
templation of the crucifix, came to show the very 
lineaments of the man of sorrows, as art had de- 
picted them, and sometimes, it is said, the very 



282 THE Christ's treatment of death. 

marks of his torture in their own bodies. It is a 
principle wonderful in its method and power. We 
are all passing into the likeness of that in which we 
believe. There is no need that men should be la- 
beled, or that they should make confession with 
their lips. Very early the faith hangs out a label, 
and soon the whole man becomes a confession of 
its truth. You have but to look, and you will see 
here a voluptuary, there a sluggard; here a miser, 
there a scholar ; here a bigot, there a skeptic ; here 
a thinker, there a fool; here a cruel, unjust man, 
there one kind, generous, true ; here one base 
throughout, there one radiant with purity. It is 
wonderful, this power of faith first moulding, then 
revealing. It is the power of love directed by 
will, which together makes up faith ; and as it 
works out so it works within, shaping all things 
there in like manner. It is by this principle that 
Christ unites men to Himself. It is at this point 
that He inserts Himself as a saving power into the 
world. He brino^s men to believe in Him in order 
that they may become like Him, and if like Him, 
then one with Him, sharers of his nature and his 
destiny. And if one with Him, then his life is their 
life ; whatever pertains to Him pertains to them. 
The fellowship and oneness engendered by faith is 
an abiding fact and endures through life and the 
change called death. Christ is the Life : He stands 
in humanity for that eternal reality, and He came 
that men might know and realize it. If they be- 
lieve in Him, they shall have life, and shall never 
die. By faith, we get over upon Christ's side in 



THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 283 

this terrible matter of death. Taught and inspired 
by Him, we are able to predicate life of ourselves, 
even as He predicated it of Himself. 

But the question rises, Did not Christ die, and do 
we not die, even if we believe in Him ? In the old- 
world, and still common, sense of the word, the 
sense in which Martha used it, Christ did not die, 
He did not go down into the grave and lie there, 
soul and body, in unconsciousness, nor did He 
pass into some nether place to wait till summoned 
again to life ; there was no loss, no forlorn stay in 
a disembodied state, as the heathen pictured the 
under-world. In this common, and still existing 
sense of death Christ did not die. He refused to 
countenance such an idea of death. And those who 
believe in Him get deliverance from these false and 
terrible views of it, and come to share in Christ's 
view. Thus those who believe in Him never die. 

In another sense Christ did die. He suffered 
this housing of the soul to be torn away, the taber- 
nacle to be taken down, but He will not call it 
death. It does not touch the life : that flows on, 
an unbroken current, and rises into greater fullness. 
And so Christ says that those who believe in Him, 
and die in this sense, do not really die: though 
dead, they live. 

And yet the fact and process of death remain. 
Its thick darkness may be taken away, but a heavy 
shadow still overhangs it. Why, having come into 
a consciousness of life, must I still undergo death ? 
— A curious and pertinent question. It is not a 
Bufficient answer to refer it to the course of nature. 



284 THE Christ's treatment of death. 

I can conceive no answer but this : Man needs for 
his supreme development to undergo the supreme 
experience, which is death. He can have no full 
test of himself, except by the death of himself. 
When he can say : " Life is my all, but I can lay 
down my life," he utters his highest word ; nothing 
more eductive can be experienced or conceived. 
There is thus reflected back to him the assertion 
and proof of his manhood and highest attainment. 
So, to die fearfully, or dumbly, or in passive sub- 
mission to the inevitable, is below man. But to 
die bravely and calmly, or for a cause, is the prime 
achievement. Hence man alone is made conscious 
of death ; he alone can freely and willingly die. 
In doing this he puts on himself the seal of a per- 
fect personality ; no test short of this would reveal 
him to himself ; none less would measure him. It 
would be a vain thing, however, if it were a con- 
scious ending of existence. I can die, but I must 
die to some purpose ; I can lay down my life, but I 
must hope to take it up again. 

We might pursue the subject into a most attrac- 
tive field of thought, and show how a life of faith 
in Christ is, in itself, a wholesome, life-giving, life- 
nurturing process. It is always turned towards life. 
It fosters growth and increase ; it strengthens and 
enlarges. It always keeps in view a fuller, broader, 
and deeper life, and thus repudiates the idea of 
death ; it does not look in that direction. One 
who believes in Christ, and is therefore pure and 
true and just and kind, has in each of these quali- 
ties a cable binding him to eternity ; for purity and 
truth and justice and love are eternal things. 



mm 



THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 285 

It is a fact of unspeakable moment tliat the whole 
matter of Christian believing and living is summed 
up as life. And by life I mean existence in the 
perfect fulfillment and enjoyment of all relations. 
Unfold this short definition into its full meaning, 
and we have life as Christ used the word. This is 
the final, comprehensive, definitive term that stands 
for the Christian idea. We misname it salvation, 
but salvation is subservient to life. We talk about 
going to heaven or hell, but Christ speaks of eter- 
nal life; of saving the soul, but Christ bids us save 
the life ; forfeit the world, if need be, but keep that 
full and unharmed. We transport the matter into 
some future world ; Christ puts it into the hour that 
now is. It is the devastating mistake of ages of 
imperfect faith that the emphasis and crisis of life 
is carried forward into the next world, robbing this 
of its dignity, disrobing it of its loftiest motives, 
cheapening by withholding from it its proper fru- 
itions. There is no juster word used amongst men 
than probation^ and none more perverted. Life is 
indeed probation, but the judgment that decides is 
in perpetual session ; not for one moment is it ad- 
journed ; every hour it renders the awards that 
angels fulfill ; daily and forever does the Christ of 
humanity judge according to the deeds done in this 
present life of humanity, and send to right or left 
hand destinies. There is no day of eternity au- 
guster than that which now is. There is nothing 
in the way of consequence to be awaited that is not 
now enacting, no sweetness that may not now be 
tasted, no bitterness that is not now felt. What 



)^ 



286 THE Christ's treatment of death. 

comes after will be but the increment of what now 
is, for even now we are in the eternal world. The 
kingdom of heaven has come and is ever coming ; 
its powers and processes, its rewards and punish- 
ments are to-day in full activity, mounting into 
ever higher expression, but never more real in one 
moment of time than in another. Thus seen, life 
begins to get meaning and dignity, and this world 
becomes a full theatre of God's action, — for here 
and now is his throne of judgment set in the heart 
of every man and in every nation. And so life is 
the single theme of the Christ, — life and its full- 
ness. God gives his children one perfect, all-com- 
prehending gift — life. It is his own image, his 
very substance shared with his creatures. Life car- 
ries everything with it ; if true, it may be trusted 
to the uttermost ; all things belong to it. By its 
own law it is endless ; why should life ever cease 
to be life ? It has but one enemy, — sin. So long 
as life is true to its own laws and relations, it knows 
no diminution of its forces. If there had been no 
sin, no law-breaking, there would have been nothing 
that we now call death. Change there might have 
been, successive phases of life, as the bud yields the 
flower, and the flower the seed, but nothing like 
that we call death. Even the body would not 
really die. Had its powers not been impaired by 
sin it would have filled its round of years without 
evil defect, and sunk into sleep, ending life as it 
began, with slowly fading consciousness, not dying, 
but changing bodies as the butterfly emerges from 
the chrysalis. Heredity almost teaches this in cer- 



THE Christ's treatment of death. 287 

tain exceptional lives. Nor would we ever have 
known this lethargy of mental faculties, this dull- 
ness of spiritual vision, this apathy of moral feeling, 
this that we truly call deadness of spirit, if in all 
generations the laws of our whole nature had been ob- 
served. But when sin came, death also came. And 
so the entire system began to work towards death, 
in body and spirit, in men and nations. Christ in- 
troduces a reversing power, and turns the stream 
of tendency toward life. It is no mystery or mira- 
cle, unless it is strange that one being should change 
another into his likeness, or bring him under his 
power. We can conceive one so recipient of Christ's 
truth, so in sympathy with Him, so obedient to Him, 
as to have little sense of yesterday or to-morrow, to 
care little for one world above another, to heed 
death as little as sleep, because he is so filled with 
the life of God. It is towards this high state that 
Christ conducts us, sowing in our hearts day by 
day the seed of eternal life, — truth and love and 
purity. For if order is restored to our souls, the 
mind and body will follow after, and spiritual life 
will assert its preeminence over physical death. 

The subject leaves us with two leading impres- 
sions : — 

1. Comfort in view of the change called death. 
That was Christ's aim, to comfort Martha as she 
wept by the grave of her brother. He does not 
strive to annihilate her grief, but to infuse it with 
another spirit. As Jesus Himself wept, so we would 
not have love shed one tear less over its dead ; but 
there are tears that are too bitter for the human 



288 THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 

eyes to shed, — tears of despair ; and there are tears 
that reflect heaven's light and promise as they fall, 
• — tears of hope. Death in certain respects can 
never be other than it is, but there is a despair, a 
horrible sickening fear to which Christ will not con- 
sent. He takes death as the world has conceived it, 
and, because He so changes the thing, He gives to 
it a new name ; He takes away its sting by taking 
away the sin of which it is the shadow. If a strict 
separation between sin and death can be effected, 
there is no evil in the latter except something of 
physical suffering, and of pain in parting from 
friends; but this is taken up and submerged in 
that vast flood of hope that flows out of the gos- 
pel. Aside from this we may approach death as we 
approach sleep, as a grateful ordinance of nature, 
not longing for it, not dreading it, but accepting it 
as God's good way : a step in life, and not a going 
out of life. Here is where the comfort of Christ's 
revelation centres ; it does not leave death a horri- 
ble uncertainty, a plunge into darkness, an entrance 
into some ghostly realm of torpid, waiting existence. 
It is instead, from first to last, a matter of life^ life 
enlarged and lifted up, fuller and freer : ''I came 
that they may have life, and may have it abun- 
dantly." 

2. The subject leads us up to a new sense of the 
value of faith in Christ. 

It is no small thing to be delivered from false 
views of death. Consider with what a hopeless 
gaze the heathen regard it, what dreary visions of 
an under- world, peopled with shivering, bodiless 



THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 289 

shades, working out the penalties of earthly sins, or 
revisiting the earth in degraded forms. The Jews 
even got no farther than some vague notion of a 
resurrection at the last day. There is no certainty 
till we come to Christ, and no deliverance from fear 
except through faith in Him. And by what rule 
shall we measure the value of this certainty and 
deliverance ? We who have looked the last upon 
faces dear to us, and seen the life spark vanish from 
sight, can feel, though we cannot measure, the value 
of the faith which assures us that death is but the 
shadow of a coming greater life. It is a matter of 
unspeakable comfort, a blessing not to be compassed 
by thought, that Christ has inverted all the mean- 
ings that nature and habit have put upon death. 
The question is often put. What has Christianity 
done for the world ? It has, at least, done this : 
When a mother lays her babe in the grave, life of 
her life, and loved more than life, she can believe 
that it is not dead but alive ; that elsewhere its 
sweet life is going on with full function and person- 
ality. It is no small matter that human love is 
thus kept alive in hope, rather than crushed under 
the nether millstone of despair. What has Christ 
done for the world ? He has delivered human love 
from the bondage of despair, and brought it under 
the inspiration of hope. And this is nothing more 
nor less than keeping love alive and strong ; for 
nothing is surer than that the constant blighting of 
love by hopeless death wears away its fineness and 
weakens its power as an element of civilization. 
Few heathen wives are like Phocion's, of whom 

19 



290 THE Christ's treatment of death. 

Plutarch tells, who, when her husband was unjustly 
put to death by the Athenians, herself lighted his 
. funeral pyre and gathered up his bones in her lap 
and brought them to her house and buried them 
under her hearthstone, saying, " Blessed hearth ! 
to your custody I commit the remains of a good 
and brave man." What love, and yet what de- 
spair ! Under the strain of such unrelieved suffer- 
ing, love shrinks and hardens ; — 

" Death with its mace petrific, smites it into stone.'* 

Love must have hope to feed on or it shrivels into 
mere animal instinct ; but when soothed and drawn 
up to heaven by its hope, and spiritualized by a 
sense of eterna,l life, it asserts its infinite energies, 
and works in its own mighty way for the regenera- 
tion of the world. It is in such ways that Christ 
ministers to civilization. He invented no machine, 
neither engine, nor loom, nor compass ; He taught 
no science ; He laid down no theory of public edu- 
cation, no system of government ; He organized no 
school of social science. It is a superficial view that 
regards civilization as depending upon these things. 
Christ went deeper : He took off the pressure from 
the human heart so that it could beat freeh^, and 
send full pulses of healthy blood to the brain and 
hands and feet of society. The human heart lies 
back of and underneath all else ; out of it are all 
issues of life, for society as well as for individuals. 
Unless love, parental and social, is kept strong and 
vital, there will be no civilization worth the name. 
But love cannot be constantly smitten by death and 



THE Christ's treatment of death. 291 

its despair, and preserve its high and ministrative 
functions. What has Christ done for civilization ? 
He secured free action for the mainspring of civi- 
lization. Get down to its heart and there you will 
find the brooding, creative spirit of Christ, filling 
it with hope and strength. 

By what mighty arguments are we thus led up to 
Christ ? Come, then, all ye who are in bondage to 
the fear of death ; and ye who have laid away be- 
loved ones in the sleep called death, and ye who are 
cherishing seeds of sin that make death real, come 
all to Christ, sit at his feet, believe on Him ; be 
one v^ith Him ; and as He lives, ye shall live also, 
and shall never die. 



THE 

KESUEEECTION PKOM THE DEAD. 



" Then long eternity shall greet our bliss 
With an individual Itiss." Milton, On Time. 

**Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, 
And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; 
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ; 
Within be fed, without be rich no more; 
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, 
And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then." 

Shakespeare, Sonnet cxlvi. 

** This wonderfully woven life of ours shall not be broken by death 
In a single strand of it; it shall run on and on, an unbroken life, upheld 
by the will of the Eternal. Death cannot break it, but it shall change 
it. It shall draw from it all perishable dross. While the life remains 
the same, some elements of which its strands are woven shall be changed; 
instead of the silver cord shall be the thread of gold ; for the corruptible 
shall be the incorruptible ; and there shall be no more entanglement and 
imperfection, no more strain upon any strand of it; the flesh shall not 
chafe against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh, but there shali 
be at last the one perfectly accorded, incorruptible, and beautiful life.'* 
— Rev. Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in New Lights, page 366. 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD 



I 
I 



" He is not here ; for He is risen, even as He said." — St. Matthew 
xxviii. 6. 

" If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body." — 1 Cor. 
XV. 44. 

The doctrine of immortality and the doctrine of 
resurrection from the dead stand somewliat in the 
same relation as a block of marble to a finished 
statue. The Christian* doctrine of resurrection is 
the natural fact of immortality wrought into shape. 
We may know there is a statue in the marble, but 
how beautiful it may be, in what grace of posture 
it may stand, what emblems may hang upon its 
neck or crown its head, what spirit may breathe 
from its features, we do not know till the inspired 
sculptor has uncovered his ideal and brought it to 
light. The analog}^ may go farther. As an artist 
works a mass of marble into a statue, putting men- 
tal conceptions and meanings into it that are no part 
of the marble, so Clirist has given a divine shape to 
immortality and filled it with beautiful suggestions 
and gracious meaning. We see in the statue the 
mind of the sculptor as well as the marble ; so in 
the doctrine of the resurrection we see the mind 
and purpose of Christ as well as the bare fact of 
future existence. 



296 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

The doctrine has fared ill in previous ages, a3 
have all the great doctrines. But the perversion 
of truth is due not so much to ignorance as to an 
overmastering desire to guard against correspond- 
ing errors. Over against nearly all the false and 
gross forms that Christian truth has taken on from 
age to age, may be discerned the shadows of errors 
that have faded from our view, but were very real 
to the men whom they first confronted. It has been 
the way of the world thus far to meet error by ex- 
aggerating the truth. The human mind loves the 
truth and is ever seeking it, but it has not yet 
reached the point of resting calmly and steadily 
upon it; its action is like the swing of a pen- 
dulum rather than like the poise of the needle,— 
vibrating across the centre of truth instead of point- 
ing straight towards it. We must not allow our- 
selves to be either shocked or disgusted by the 
forms given to the doctrine of the resurrection in 
the early Christian centuries. Let us rather re- 
member that the generations after us may hold our 
views of truth, on many points, as cheap as we hold 
those of the ancients on the subject before us. Not 
that there is no attainable standard of truth ; we 
have a compass pointing to the exact truth as well 
as a pendulum vibrating about it, — a divine reve- 
lation whose source is in the heavens, as well as a 
human reason swayed by the forces of earth. We 
find in the Scriptures tlie doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion set down in forms that not only agree with 
reason, but stimulate it to higher exercise. Neither 
in Christ nor in St. Paul do we discover the pres- 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 297 

sure of worldly influence in their treatment of it. 
Christ was Himself the resurrection ; He did not so 
much teach it as act it ; and therefore we find in 
Him the absolute truth of the subject. St. Paul's 
discussion of it grows more and more luminous as 
it is subjected to the advancing thought of the ages. 
It cannot be denied, however, that very early it 
took on a crude and gross aspect. The Fathers 
taught not only the resurrection of the flesh, but 
drew it out into the most absurd particulars ; the 
hair, the teeth, the nails, and every specified organ 
of the human frame would be raised up ; some 
claiming that the bodies would be raised as they 
were at death ; others as in their highest perfec- 
tion ; others that the hair and nails cut would not 
be lost, neither would they be raised '' in such 
enormous quantities as to deform their original 
places, but shall return into the body, into that 
substance from which they grew." Such views 
strike us as ludicrous, but there is an explanation 
of them. 

Two great enemies threatened the early life of the 
Church : Pantheism and Gnosticism. There are 
but two philosophies — the Christian and the Pan- 
theistic : one asserting the personality of God and 
man ; the other denying all personality. The doc- 
trine of the one ever-living God kept the Jewish 
nation free from the latter ; for the personality of 
God carries with it the personality of man. Chris- 
tianity reasserted it, and gave it intensity by exalt- 
ing man, and investing him with supreme duties, 
and assigning to him a personal destiny. It is this 



298 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

single fact that underlies modern civilization, an 
intense sense of the personality of man. It is the 
mainspring of the energy, the humanity and the 
faith of Western civilization as contrasted with the 
Oriental and the Ancient. If the question be raised 
again that is now so often raised as a taunt — 
"What has Christianity done for the world?" — - 
we answer : it established a philosophy of man that 
has inspired whatever is great and good in modern 
civilization, and it supplanted a philosophy that 
unnerved man's spirit, stripped him of all dignity, 
and made him not only an easy victim of tyrants 
but of little worth in his own sight. 

Wherever the Christian theory does not prevail, 
the Pantheistic does ; it is the only alternative of 
the human mind ; it haunts the world continually ; 
all lapses of Christian faith are in its direction. It 
was the philosophy of the world when Christ en- 
tered it; it will be the philosophy of the world if 
Christianity is ever driven out of it. Its effect is 
to blast human energy by destroying human per- 
sonality. The Fathers felt its encroachments upon 
the Church, and well understood its influence. By 
assailing personality, it denied an enduring identity^ 
which is the total significance of the resurrection. 
In order to meet the Pantheistic spirit and influ- 
ence, they went to an extreme and claimed that the 
resurrection covered the whole man, flesh and bones 
as well as mind and spirit. In the main the}?" were 
right ; in the details they were wrong. It is com- 
mon to flout the memory of these great names by 
holding up the unseemly details of their teaching, 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 299 

but they did not act under the inspiration of igno- 
rance ; they were guarding the most sacred truth 
ever committed to human keeping against the most 
insidious foe that ever assailed it. Their philosophy 
was not yet fine enough to teach them that personal 
identity consists not in flesh and blood, and so, in 
their noble zeal for this vital truth, they asserted 
the resurrection of the flesh. 

Another enemy that threatened the Church, more 
definite and specific than Pantheism, was Gnosti- 
cism with its Oriental doctrine of contempt of the 
body, holding that there is an antagonism between 
the flesh and the spirit, and that the flesh itself is 
evil, — a dangerous doctrine, as it makes sin exter- 
nal, transfers it from the heart to the body, and so 
turns all the forces of religion into mere discipline 
of the flesh. The Fathers perceived its danger, and 
not only denied that the flesh was evil, but empha- 
sized their denial by asserting its literal resurrec- 
tion. Again, they were right in the main but 
wrong in detail. This doctrine of contempt for 
the body was not only injurious to religion but to 
civilization. Its tendency was to paralyze society 
by reducing the wants of the body to the lowest 
point. Had the Fathers allowed this doctrine to 
prevail, not only would the Church have been sub- 
verted, but civilization itself would have been 
checked. Thus we see that the assertion of the 
resurrection of the flesh, with all its gross absurdity, 
was an assertion in favor of breadth of thought and 
of toleration ; it was a protest against narrowness 
and bigotry. We are accustomed to think of the 



SOO THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

ancient creeds as putting limitations about thouglit 
and belief, but they were rather assertions of lib- 
erty, — veritable bills of human rights, prescribing 
not so much that men shall think in right ways, as 
that they shall not think in narrow and shriveling 
ways. It is very easy, it costs but little mental 
effort, to throw contempt upon the doctrines of 
the early church, but no broad thinker, no wise, 
charitable mind, will indulge in such a habit. The 
forms given to the early doctrines may be criticised, 
but they are not to be despised. 

It was this sturdy defense of great imperiled in- 
terests that secured for the doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion the place it has so long held in the Church. 
The occasion for the form first given to it has 
passed away, but the form itself remains. We still 
assert in words a literal resurrection of the body, 
but none of us believe it. Our hymns, our prayers, 
our epitaphs, and too often our sermons, imply that 
the dust of our bodies shall be reanimated in some 
far-off future and joined to the waiting soul. At 
the same time, we know that science declares it to 
be impossible ; our reason revolts from it ; it is sus- 
tained by no analogy ; it is an outworn and nearly 
discarded opinion. There is, however, a general 
feeling of perplexity in regard to it. The present 
state of the question rather breeds skepticism than 
ministers to faith. Teach a thinking man chemis- 
try and he must be skeptical ; mathematics even is 
against the traditional view. It is an unhappy 
thing when one revelation of God is set in appar- 
ent opposition to another. When such is the case, 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 301 

the higher revelation commonly yields before the 
lower one ; we side with the lower because it is 
nearer. The wiser way is to harmonize them ; for 
God cannot be inconsistent with Himself. 

The view now offered is substantially this : that 
the resurrection is from the dead^ and not from the 
grave ; that it takes place at death ; that it is gen- 
eral in the sense of universal ; that the spiritual 
body, or the basis of the spiritual body, already 
exists, and that this is the body that is raised up, — 
God giving it such outward form as pleaseth Him, 
and thus preserving that dualistic state essential to 
consciousness, if not to existence itself. I hold 
these views as both scriptural and rational, as ac- 
cording with the essence of the doctrine and with 
the analogies of nature. 

Let us notice some considerations that render 
these points probable. 

The analogy of nature. The continuance of life 
in the succession of plants and animals does not 
depend upon the transmission of matter, but of an 
immaterial principle or entity folded within the 
least possible amount of matter. The matter does 
not seem to be essential to the future life except as 
holding it during a very brief crisis. When an 
oak is about to become another oak, its life is com- 
mitted to an acorn, — a slight wrapping of matter, 
and thus left for a few days till the oak can begin 
again its general method of existence by air and 
light and moisture, when it lets go the enfolding 
matter which decays and becomes to the new oak 
no more than any other matter. It may foster its 



302 THE KESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

life by its decay, but it does this incidentally, as 
any other matter might. The acorn simply covers 
a crisis in the life of the oak ; the continuance of 
the oak does not depend upon the continuance of 
the acorn, but rather upon getting rid of it. The 
principle is universal. The law of succession does 
not consist in one bodily form entering into another, 
but in something quite different. As applied to 
the resurrection, this analogy indicates that future 
life does not depend upon the preservation of the 
physical body, but rather upon its loss. 

We find a similar analogy in the animal world. 
The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis — a per- 
fect creature — not by working up the substance of 
the worm into itself, but by a growth within it. 
At a certain stage, the chrysalis may be opened, 
and the members of the winged insect may be seen, 
two bodies in one : one fed through the agency 
of the other, but not identical with it. The but- 
terfly gains its perfect form, not by assimilating 
the worm, but by getting rid of it. It is the 
most beautiful analogy in nature, its very gospel 
upon the resurrection, — at first a creeping thing, 
dull and earth-bound, a slight period of dormancy, 
and then a winged creature floating upon the air 
and feeding upon flowers ; one life, yet possessing 
from the first the potency of two forms. The 
Greeks early saw it, and adopted it into their phi- 
losophy and literature, using it, however, better 
than we do. For, misled by false notions of a car- 
nal resurrection, we have argued back upon the 
analogy and treated it as though the substance of 



sai 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 303 

the caterpillar were transmitted into the substance 
of the butterfly, which is not scientific truth. But 
the Greeks regarded it as both a body and a soul, 
not a soul made out of a body. 

The entire significance and value of the doctrine 
of the resurrection from the dead, centre in the fact 
that it sets forth human identity. There are two 
general types of thought in regard to the nature of 
man. One asserts that he is a person ; the other 
that he is an essential part of nature. All special 
theorizing ranges itself under one of these types. 
Pantheism asserts that man is merely phenomenal, 
and at death sinks back into the general whole. 
Christianity asserts that man is an immortal per- 
son. It is the antagonism of these two systems 
that led St. Paul and the Fathers to lay such em- 
phasis upon the resurrection. The latter, hard 
pressed by Pantheism in defending identity, did 
not carefully or correctly define in what identity 
consists, and so pushed on to the extreme of assert- 
ing a resurrection of the flesh. It remains for mod- 
ern thinking to clear away the slight rubbish left 
by them about " the foundations of the great truth, 
and make it consonant with revelation and science. 
Pantheism says that man is a part of nature ; Chris- 
tianity says that man is made in God's image, — a 
person and forever to be a person, or that he has 
an enduring identity. The resurrection is mainly 
the assertion that this identity continues after death 
in opposition to Pantheism, which claims that man 
is resolved into the elements. Any theory that pre- 
serves full identity is sufficient to meet the demands 



804 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

of faith, for this is the main point that the doctrine 
is designed to teach. 

The question now rises : In what does identity 
consist ? 

Identity does not lie in matter, nor is it depend, 
ent upon matter. If it does, then matter and the 
will are the same ; then mind is as phenomenal as 
matter and is under the same laws. Hence fatal- 
ism ; hence pantheism ; evil is good and good is 
evil. By a fiction of language, however, we apply 
identity to material things. It is on the assump- 
tion that this is a true use of the word, that the 
puzzles of the metaphysicians are constructed as to 
the sameness of a thing with changing elements ; 
as a knife whose parts are lost and replaced succes- 
sively, till no single part of the original remains. 
Is it the same knife ? If the lost parts are found 
and reunited, is that the same knife ? Did the 
original knife lose its identity ; and if so, when ? 
These insolvable puzzles show the logical impro- 
priety of applying the word identity to matter. 
Matter has no real identity. Matter is one ; it is 
in perpetual flux. The mist rising from the river 
is a visible illustration of an invisible, universal 
process. The lichens upon our granite hills are 
transforming rock into gas and soil as really as the 
sun is changing the river into mist. Neither rock, 
nor lichens, nor the gas and dust into which they 
change have identity. The only identity we can 
apply to matter is that of appearance. We say the 
river is the same, but it is the sameness of appear- 
ance only, it changes every moment. A ray ol 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 305 

light, a column of smoke, a jflame of fire, — these are 
the same only in the sense that they offer the same 
appearance. The hunter leaves his cabin in the 
morning, and before he enters the forest, turns and 
sees the blue column of smoke ascending from his 
hearth. He returns at evening and sees the same 
column of smoke, but in reality it is another col- 
umn in the same place. I go back at times to the 
spot where years ago I used to watch the coming 
and going of the ships, and I say to the dear friend 
who watches them still from that place of match- 
less beauty, " There are the same white sails we 
used to see twenty years ago." But they are not 
even the same ships ; there is simply the same ap- 
pearance and impression. 

Now what is the identity of the human body? 
Have we anything different when we come to the 
"human form divine?" There is one ever-acting 
enemy of material identity — oxygen - — unceasing 
combustion. No material thing remains the same 
for the millionth part of a second. We see this 
transformation in flame ; we do not see it in flesh, 
but the flesh is burning as really as the wood. If 
it burns too fast there is fever and death ; if it 
burns too slowly there is also death. The chemists 
tell us that we are ablaze to the tips of our fingers. 
Food is the fuel, and the fire runs along the veins 
as flues, burning up certain particles that are re- 
placed by others. This process makes up physical 
life. Stop it, that is, establish positive identity, 
and death speedily follows. Thus material iden- 
tity, instead of being a factor of life is a factor of 

20 



306 THE RESUERECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

death. It is on the wrong side of the question for 
those who would connect it with the living fact of 
the resurrection. 

Such facts as these show us the difficulty of con- 
necting identity with the material body, and of 
supposing that it enters, in any way, into the fact 
of the resurrection.^ 

The ancients, having no science to instruct them, 
regarded the body as always the same and imper- 
ishable. Hence the Egyptians embalmed their 
dead and hid them within mountains of stone ; 
hence the Jews buried within caves and rock-hewn 
sepulchres, sealing the entrance with stones, look- 
ing for a physical resurrection. But the knowledge 
of oxygen puts another face upon the matter, and 
we must not forget that God made oxygen and or- 
dained its function. We do not set science against 
the Bible, but we may use science as an aid in in- 
terpreting it. 

We now answer our question positively. Its neg- 
ative side shows us that personal identity cannot 
lie in matter ; then it must lie outside of matter. 

What is the living creature man ? He is not the 
matter that makes up the perpetual flux known as 

1 If there is any organized matter of which identity can be predi- 
cated, it must be a form that is beyond the known laws of matter, — 
some refinement of it too delicate and ethereal to admit of disorganiza- 
tion. This is indeed supposable, and seems to some to be called for in 
order to explain the connection between mind and matter, but we have 
not, as yet, any grounds for accepting it; nor even thus could the gulf 
between the external world and consciousness be bridged. It offers, 
however, an interesting field for the united studies of the metaphysician, 
the physiologist, and the chemist. The acceptance of an interstellar 
ether as a simple logical inference from the nature of light, affords a 
hint that there may be discoveries of even another kind of matter. 



mmm 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 307 

the human frame ; he is nothing that the chemist 
can put test to. He must be something, not mate- 
rial, that endures, upon which the shifting phenom- 
ena of animal life plaj^ themselves off. We may 
not be able to say what it is, or to get a clear con- 
ception of it ; but we know there is something that 
sustains the fleshly existence. Call it an organiza- 
tion, a dynamic essence, a substance, that which 
stands under the phenomena of life ; call it, as 
does St. Paul, a spiritual body; any name answers 
so long as we recognize the thing. It may be well 
to regard the Scriptural distinction of hody^ soul, 
and spirit as organic and not rhetorical, and to 
think of man as a threefold being : a physical 
body, a human soul, and a living spirit. It is at 
least a convenient distinction, and so using it, we 
claim that identity resides in the two last as mak- 
ing up human nature, and in no sense in the first. 
Thus we do not come to the man, the unchanging 
person, till we get outside of matter. There, beyond 
the reach of the chemist and his tests, in the imma- 
terial soul and spirit, in the underlying organiza- 
tion, in the living type, it matters not what we call 
it, lies the proper identity of man. No addition or 
withdrawal of matter can increase or lessen this 
identity. He is as perfectly man without as with 
flesh. And for aught we know, his mental and spir- 
itual operations might go on without the physical 
system, though not without some sort of a body. 
If separated, the soul would quickly have another 
body suitable to its place and needs, for the soul is 
the builder of man ; as Spenser says : — 



808 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

" For of the soul the body form doth take, 
For soul is form, and doth the body make." 

Now as identity is the central idea of the res- 
urrection, what is the fact of the resurrection ? 
Taught by so many ages of traditional belief, it is 
not easy to rid ourselves of the thought that it is 
in some way connected with the physical body, that 
something goes into the grave that is to come out. 
It is interesting to recall how clear a conception 
Socrates had on this matter. " In what way would 
you have us bury you ? " said Crito to him. " In 
any way that you like ; onl}^ you must get hold of 
me, and take care that I do not walk away from 
you." Then turning to those about him, with a 
smile, he continued : "I cannot make Crito believe 
that I am the same Socrates who have been talking 
and conducting the argument ; he fancies that I am 
the other Socrates whom he will soon see a dead 
body, and asks, How shall he bury me? And 
though I have spoken many words in the endeavor 
to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall 
leave you to go to the joys of the blessed, these 
words of mine with which I comforted you and 
myself, have had, as I perceive, no effect upon 
Crito. I would not have him say at the burial — 
Thus we lay out Socrates, or, thus we follow him to 
the grave ; for false words are not only evil in 
themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be 
of good cheer then, my dear Crito, and say that 
you are burying my body only, and do with that as 
you think best." 

Our thinking on this point will correct itself if 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 309 

we keep in mind that the body is not the man, and 
that it is the man who is raised up. He goes into 
the other world simply unclothed of flesh, there to 
take on an environing body suited to his new con- 
ditions. As here we have a body adapted to grav- 
itation and time and space, coordinated to physical 
law, a body with cycles of time — day and night, 
months and years, wrought into it, — a body that 
feeds upon organized matter, that responds to heat 
and cold, and is simply a pathway of nerves be- 
tween the mind and the external world, so doubt- 
less it will be hereafter ; the spirit will build about 
itself a body such as its new conditions demand. 

This change necessarily takes place at death. A 
disembodied state, or a state of torpid existence be- 
tween death and some far-off day of resurrection, 
an under-world where the soul waits for the reani- 
mation of its body ; these are old-world notions 
that survive only through chance contact with the 
Christian system. Christ did not teach them ; his 
ascension was an illustrative denial of them. He 
found such beliefs existing as a part of the religion 
of the day, and did not contradict them in set 
terms, but taught higher truth in regard to the sub- 
ject, and left them to fall by their own weight. 
This higher truth was the announcement of Him- 
self as the Resurrection and the Life. This simple 
phrase, when thoroughly understood^ is the repudia- 
tion of all these ghostly theories that overhung the 
ancient world, and have floated down into the 
Christian ages. It takes the element of far futu- 
rity out of the resurrection, and dissipates the shad 



310 THE EESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

ows of the under-world, by putting life in place of 
death. 

We will glance at some of the texts bearing on 
the subject. The Sadducees propose a question that 
implies the resurrection of the flesh at the last day, 
a doctrine of their rivals, the Pharisees, and fairly 
stated. Christ's answer is directed mainly to the 
dogma, not to either sect. Its central idea is that 
because the Patriarchs are alive, they have been 
raised up. " But that the dead are raised, even 
Moses showed ; He is not the God of the dead, but 
of the living ; for all live unto Him." Their resur- 
rection is the pivot upon which their present life 
turns. If Christ's words do not mean this, we must 
despair of language as a vehicle of thought. 

His words at the tomb of Lazarus are equally 
plain, and are of the same tenor. Martha states 
the doctrine of a resurrection at the last day ; 
Christ sets it aside as a cold, comfortless supersti- 
tion, and announced faith in Himself as covering 
the whole matter. The plainest feature of this nar- 
rative is the contrast Christ makes between Mar- 
tha's words and his own ; if one was right the other 
was wrong. 

The words of Christ to the penitent thief, " To- 
day thou shalt be with me in Paradise," imply a 
life of conscious fellowship beyond, and because it 
was such, having all the elements of a perfect con- 
dition. 

There are indeed words of Christ that seem to 
imply a resurrection from the grave, as, " The hour 
Cometh in which all that are in the tombs shall 



THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 311 

hear his voice." If we read these words literally 
we must believe that the entire man, body and soul, 
is in the grave, which is more than can be claimed 
by any. The very absurdity drives us to another 
conception, — that of Christ's assertion of his power 
over both worlds, the living and the dead. 

Again Christ said repeatedly : '' I will raise him 
up at the last day," but we must not read these 
words as an endorsement of a far-off resurrection 
but rather as a pledge of help to the end, and of 
final victory. He adopted a current phrase because 
any other would have diverted the mind from the 
main thought. 

Christ's own resurrection yields a proof of the 
immediate resurrection of all. He was the Son of 
Man, and as He fulfilled all the righteousness of 
humanity, so He illustrated the life of humanity. 
He lived and died as a man. He rose and ascended 
into heaven as a man. Why should we assert a 
part of this and not the whole ? Why die as a man, 
but rise as God ? We have no authority for draw- 
ing such a line of demarcation between these two 
phases of his career. Instead, the whole signifi- 
cance of his relation to humanity demands that no 
Buch line shall be drawn. He would not be the Son 
of man, nor the Saviour of mankind, if his resurrec- 
tion had been immediate, and mankind's were to 
be delayed for ages. To every believer who closes 
his eyes in death trusting in Him, He says ''^To-day 
thou shalt be with me." 

We cannot enter upon a full examination of St. 
Paul's great chapter on the subject, but will only 



S12 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 

say, read it, with the points already discussed in 
view, and you will find verse after verse ranging 
itself naturally under them. " Flesh and blood 
cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth 
corruption inherit incorruption." " If there is a 
natural body, there is also a spiritual body," — one 
succeeding the other. We have borne the image 
of the earthly, we shall bear the image of the 
heavenly ; but there is no hint that countless ages 
intervene between them. The whole drift of the 
triumphant words is towards an immediate ex- 
change of one image for the other. There are 
words in this chapter that are hard to understand. 
It is not easy to get a clear conception of what St. 
Paul means when he says : " We shall not all sleep, 
but we shall all be changed." There is often an 
element of futurity in his references to the resur- 
rection seemingly at variance with other references. 
But St. Paul used all his great words — faith, justi- 
fication, death, resurrection — in different senses. 
Thus he says : " If ye then be risen with Christ," 
— meaning a spiritual resurrection already accom- 
plished. But the great fifteenth chapter is aimed 
directly at those who held this view of it; the 
difference being that St. Paul held both views, and 
his opponents but one. Doubtless in some sense 
the resurrection will be future and far off, and per- 
haps simultaneous for all, but it will not be the 
resurrection from the dead. The death of man, 
and his assumption of a spiritual body, is not the 
whole of the resurrection. It stands for " the 
finished condition of humanity," and its final pres- 



THE EESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 313 

entation to God as the work of Christ. " What 
mysteries lie beyond the mark " of death we know 
not. St. Paul may have had glimpses that he could 
not wholly express. But when he said that he was 
willing to be absent from the body and to be present 
with the Lord ; and that he desired to depart and 
to be with Christ, he had no thought of a resurrec- 
tion that would put a moment between the death 
of his body and his presence with the Lord. 

And this may be our faith. Having life in its 
abundance, there is no break in its current at death ; 
there is no waste of even endless ages. If joined 
to the divine Life, every change must be to more 
life. If one with Christ, how can it be that we 
shall not share his destiny, and go from world to 
world in his company ? Because we are one with 
the Life, death has no more any dominion over us. 
With such hopes let us await our time of departure* 
With such hopes let us lay our dead in the grave, 
— not dead, not here, for they are risen. 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 



" But in these cases, 
We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor ; this even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
To our own lips." Macbeth, I. 7. 

"You reap what you sow — not something else — but that. An act of 
love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens hum- 
bleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown multiplied a hundred- 
fold. You have sown a seed of life — you reap life." — Robertson's 
Sermons^ Vol. I., No. XIV. 

" Oh ! that my lot may lead me in the path of holy innocence of word 
and deed, the path which august laws ordain, laws that in the highest 
empj'rean had their birth, of which heaven is the father alone, neither 
did the race of mortal man beget them, nor shall oblivion ever put them 
to sleep. The power of God is mighty in them, and groweth not old." 
— Sophocles, (Ed. Tyr. 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 



"Some men's sins are evident, going before unto judgment; sotd 
some men also they follow after." — 1 Timothy v. 24. 

I DO not claim to be wholly correct in my use of 
these much-disputed words, when I connect them 
with God's judgment of sin. I presume they 
simply mean that some men's characters are open, 
and anticipate the verdict of more thorough knowl- 
edge ; others are more reticent, and become known 
only after a longer trial of them. They are simply 
an injunction of carefulness, made by St. Paul to 
Timothy, in regard to ordination ; as though he had 
said, " Be careful whom you ordain ; some men are 
transparent, easily understood ; others reveal them- 
selves more slowly." They are the words of age 
and wisdom addressed to youth and inexperience, 
with perhaps some special vindication in the not 
over-robust nature of Timothy. 

Still they contain the principle I wish to bring 
out, namely, men's sins manifest themselves vari- 
ously as to time, some reaping their penalty soon, 
others late ; some in this world, others in the next 
world. I am certainly within the spirit of the text 
when I say that some sins anticipate judgment; 
they invoke it, and receive its sentence, and experi- 
ence its penalty, apparently before the time ; they 



818 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

run their course quickly, and incur their doom m 
this life. There are other sins that meet with little 
check ; they are slow to overtake their consequences ; 
they come upon little in this life that can be called 
penalty. Speaking from daily observation, we may 
say that the retribution of some sins begins in this 
world ; while there are other sins that await their 
punishment in the next world. 

I am well aware of a distinction often made by 
which the consequences of sin are divided into chas- 
tisement and penalty ; one being reformatory, and 
having the good of the sufferer in view ; the other 
penal, and looking towards governmental ends. But 
the distinction is confusing to practical thought ; 
we cannot be sure that it is true ; and if it were, 
who shall draw the line of demarcation ? I prefer, 
for practical purposes, to regard both elements as 
present in all penalty, to see in it always a reforma- 
tory design, and also a purpose to vindicate the law, 
— two inseparable things, however. 

Both elements are present in every actual case of 
natural penalty. No man suffers the painful con- 
sequences of vice without knowing that the pain 
calls for reformation, and also that it is a vindica- 
tion of the excellence of the law. Why should 
we discriminate between what God has so closely 
united ? Neither in nature nor in the Scriptures 
do we find a warrant for drawing a line through the 
consequences of sin, and saying, " This is discipli- 
nary, and that is penal." The suffering involved in 
sin utters but one voice, but it utters it in various 
notes, and with an undertone. It first sounds a 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 319 

note of warning : " Do not sin ; you will suffer if 
you do." When sin is committed it says : " Do 
not sin again." And if the sin is repeated, and 
settles down into a habit, it says : " You will suffer 
BO long as you sin." At the same time there may 
be heard the deep under-tone of conscience declar- 
ing the punishment to be just. This is all that 
penalty says to the sinner ; that sin begets suffer- 
ing; and that the suffering is divinely just ; and it 
says the latter in order to make the lesson of the 
former effective. When a man suffers in conse- 
quence of sin, and, at the same time, sees it to be 
just, connecting it of course with the Maker of the 
law, he is feeling the two strongest motives adverse 
to sin that are possible to his nature. Penalty says 
this first and last and always ; and it never says 
anything else. What authority have we for in- 
truding upon this profound operation of God's law 
with our arbitrary distinction, saying : " Up to this 
point the suffering is chastisement, but beyond it 
is hopeless penalty ; hitherto it is for man's good ; 
henceforth it is for the glory of God and the main- 
tenance of his government." I protest against this 
distinction, because it is practically mischievous 
and weakening in the everyday experience of men. 
I would not have ouq think, when he is feeling the 
painful consequences of sin, that he is simply under- 
going chastisement with a view to the correction of 
his fault, but I would have him also feel that he is 
enduring the wrath of God against sin. In other 
words, I would not withhold the grandest element 
of penalty from any stage of its action, but would 



820 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

secure the action of its entire meaning upon the 
earliest as well as the latest phase of sin. The 
natural conscience makes no such distinction. As 
the body withers under the pain engendered by its 
sin, the conscience confesses that it is undergoing 
the just punishment of God. To thrust the distinc- 
tion between chastisement and punishment into this 
indivisible experience, is to weaken and undo its 
saving work. 

It is never well to make distinctions in moral 
operations that are not plainly indicated in those 
operations. Human ingenuity may not only make 
this distinction in regard to penalty, but many 
more ; they are possible to thought ; but if you 
would have the penalty of sin effective, do not lay 
the finger of analysis upon it ; let it stand in the 
singleness of its awful grandeur, warning the sin- 
ner and showing forth the wrath of God upon sin. 
It would augment public virtue if men were taught 
that the painful consequences of their sins and 
crimes are even now the veritable judgments of 
God; if already they could be made to feel that 
the pains that have hold of them are the pains of 
hell. The Gehenna of which Christ spoke, lay just 
outside the walls of Jerusalem. The smoke of its 
never-quenched fires rose before the eyes of his au- 
dience. There, close at hand, was the pit into 
which their whole bodies would speedily be cast if 
they did not cut off their offending hands and feet, 
and pluck out their offending eyes. He did not 
say, " The pains in your offending members are 
simply admonitory, — merely corrective of your 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 321 

faults ; soon you are to be punished in some other 
way and for another purpose." Not thus does a 
great moral teacher warn men of their sins. The 
thunderbolt of retribution is not divided into sec- 
tions, according to a theological note-book ; it does 
not flash two lights upon the guilty soul. When 
punishment overtakes sin, be it sooner or later, it 
contains its whole meaning. 

There is a distinction, however, as to the time in 
which the consequences of sin assert themselves as 
punishment ; a distinction simply of sooner or later, 
here or hereafter, based upon the kind of sin. 

We shall best come to an understanding of this 
truth by looking a little into the method of retri- 
bution. 

It is, as its definition implies, a return of disobe- 
dience, or payment, when, in due time, it returns 
again. It is the natural and inevitable consequence 
of broken law. If we seek for an explanation of 
this law, we find none, except that it is so. We 
perceive its fitness and beneficence, but farther 
back we cannot go. The law is wrought into our 
moral nature, and also into our consciousness ; cer- 
tainly, it commands early and universal assent. 

We notice also that the penalty is akin to the 
sin ; it is under the seed-law, — like yielding like. 
The elements of one pass on into the other, merely 
changing their form and relation to the man, like 
the little book of the Apocalypse, sweet in the 
mouth but bitter in the belly. We pay out sin ; it 
is repaid as penalty, — the same metal coined with 
a new inscription, or molten to flow a burning 

21 



322 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

stream through all our bones. We receive back 
the things we have done, changed only as mist is 
changed to water, and heat to flame. The law of 
cause and effect, a necessary relation, the most 
generally recognized principle known to the human 
mind, covers the whole matter. And the effect 
often bears so absolute resemblance to the cause as 
to arrest the imagination, and is called poetic jus- 
tice ; the murderer drinking the poison he had pre- 
pared for another. 

In human government it is not so, but only be- 
cause of its imperfection. When we reason from 
the human to the divine government, and infer that 
God governs as man does, we reason from imper- 
fection to perfection ; we infer from the sick what 
the well man will do ; from the ignorant what the 
wise will think, — a species of logic it is time to 
have done with. If there is any special feature of 
the divine government, it is that it is not like any 
human government yet set in operation. The latter 
cannot use the seed-principle, the law of cause and 
effect, except in a limited degree, because it has 
not the creating of its subjects. It is an increated 
principle, and cannot be superinduced to any great 
extent. When a man steals, all that human law 
has yet learned to do is to imprison, or otherwise in- 
jure him, inflicting an arbitrary, deterrent suffering. 
Society merely defends itself. It is seldom skillful 
enough to establish a natural relation between the 
crime and the penalty. 

But that part of human society which is not 
organized into government, the social relationship 



k 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 323 

of men, is more skillful to connect evil with its 
natural punishment. If one sins against the con- 
ventional laws, or moral instincts, of society, he 
meets with exclusion or disgrace according to the 
nature of the offense. Treachery is punished with 
scorn ; cowardice with its own branding name of 
contempt ; a liar by the loss of trust ; pride fails 
at last of sympathy ; selfishness reaps its own iso- 
lation. Dante, with finest perception, illustrates 
the principle by placing upon the heads of hypo- 
crites crowns of lead, thus forcing them to look 
where before they had looked in mock humility » 
Society, because it is a spontaneous relation, thus 
attains somewhat to the divine method ; but only 
in God's moral kingdom do we find the principle 
perfectly observed. Planned for self-regulation, and 
in analogy with the laws of growth, it hides the 
fruit of punishment within the seed of disobedience. 
There is no arbitrary and artificial arrangement 
of prisons, and stripes, and fiery chains ; but what- 
ever there is of these is the inevitable outgrowth of 
sin. 

There is a most significant recognition of this 
principle underlying all of Christ's references to 
the subject. In no case does He touch the matter 
of penalty, but He recognizes it as flowing natu- 
rally out of sin. The unforgiving debtor goes him- 
self to prison ; the sleeping virgins find a closed 
door ; the guest without a wedding garment is ex- 
cluded from the feast ; they who make excuse, go 
without ; the prodigal comes to want ; the slothful 
servant loses that which he had ; they who will 



324 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

not minister to humanity are sent away from the 
presence of the Son of Man, who is the head of 
humanity ; they who will not cut off offending 
members must suffer the corruption of their whole 
body, and be cast into the Gehenna whose flame is 
evermore burning up corruption ; Dives, living in 
selfish ease, and giving the hungry Lazarus but the 
crumbs that fell from his table, comes at last into 
torment, and thirsts for one cooling drop of water ; 
for selfish ease works surely towards tormenting 
want. 

Cause and effect ; natural order ; congruity be- 
tween the sin and its penalty ; — these are the un- 
failing marks that the great teacher put upon the 
subject. What wisdom, what truth, what justice, 
is the voice of universal reason and conscience. 

It is the weakness of human government that it 
does not employ this principle in the punishment 
of crime, so far as it might. It was a doubtful 
policy that abolished the whipping-post and pillory. 
If a brutal husband whips his wife at home, he 
can have no better punishment than a whipping in 
public ; or, if this be corrupting to the people, then 
in private. No punishment is so effective as that 
which makes a man feel in himself what he in- 
flicts upon another. And if men who in secret do 
shameful deeds, who follow shameful callings be- 
hind screened doors and windows, could be exposed 
in humiliating ways to public contempt, the^^ would 
not only be justly but effectively punished. For 
many shameful occupations need only to have the 
stamp of shame put upon them, to be driven out 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 325 

of existence. If the keepers of brotliels were to be 
exposed to public view at noonday, witli appro- 
priate inscriptions above their heads, their business 
and numbers might shrink within an endurable 
compass. 

If these suggestions be thought to imply a retro- 
grading civilization, let me answer, they harmonize 
with the divine order. This is exactly what God 
does with offenders ; it is his way of punishing, and 
so of preventing sin, bringing hidden things to 
light, giving back to men what they have done 
whether it be good or evil. It were wise to be slow 
in pronouncing barbarous a principle and method 
so plainly a part of God's eternal order. 

Christ did not reject this law, technically known 
as the Lex talionis^ when He said : " Ye have heard 
that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a 
tooth for a tooth ; but I say unto you, resist not 
him that is evil." He merely took away from it 
the element of revenge. The Scribes had lost sight 
of the rule as a principle of judicial action, and 
made it one of retaliation. As such He condemned 
it, but He left the principle intact, and used it over 
and over in his moral teachings. It is a part of 
that older law which He said was to be fulfilled to 
the uttermost, — not however as a spirit of revenge, 
the "wild justice" of the savage, — but of that 
even-hatnded justice which Plato declares to be the 
very essence of the state. 

There is but one sound, effective method of pun- 
ishing wrong-doing, and that is to make the offender 
(eel the evil he has inflicted. God has wrought it 



326 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

into the nature of man, and the order of the uni- 
verse. We have no intimation in the Scriptures or 
in nature that sin is punished in any other way. 
And it is altogether probable that God's ways 
are sufficient for their ends. Let us not then go 
about to concoct other schemes of penalty, and 
thrust them into God's plans, because they corre- 
spond to our systems. It is one thing to reason 
from nature up to God, but quite another to reason 
from human institutions that are full of human im- 
perfection. 

This divine method of punishment does not ex- 
clude from it a sense of the feelings of the Law- 
giver. This, too, is bound up in a natural way 
with the sin. Hence it is not necessary to make a 
distinction between punishment and penalty, on the 
ground that one expresses the feeling of a personal 
Lawgiver, while the other is the natural conse- 
quence of sin. This distinction is the fruit of a 
mechanical, extra-mundane conception of God ; it 
is not necessary in order to secure the presence of 
such personal feeling. A proper conception of God 
as immanent in the order of nature avoids the 
necessity of the distinction ; the operations of na- 
ture are expressions of God's personal feelings. 
When a man breaks a law of God, a sense of the 
wrath of God at once asserts itself, if the conscience 
is natural ; if it is hardened, it slumbers, but sooner 
or later it awakes. The painters set forth a uni- 
versal truth when they depict Cain as fleeing from 
the dead body of Abel with downcast head ; there 
was an eye above whose glance he felt, but could 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 327 

not face. And thus the wrath of God against sin 
is wrought into the very automatism of the body. 

We do not know that there is any other way in 
which God can lay hold of a sinner to punish him. 
I do not mean that God is limited in Himself, but 
in the offender. The pain must reflect the sin, or 
the sinner is not punished ; he will not feel the 
justice of the punishment, or get to hate the sin, 
until he has tasted its bitterness, and felt its dis- 
cord as an agony in his own soul. God sustains all 
relations through law ; even love and grace are by 
law — the law of love and grace. There is even a 
"law of liberty." But the special feature of the 
sinner's relation to God is a relation of law, — broken 
law, and his punishment consists in the fact that he 
is shut up with it. And out of the fragments of 
broken law rise barriers, built by nature, that shut 
the sinner away from everything but the broken 
law : away from God, away from all true fellow- 
ship with men, away from himself, till at last he 
finds himself in the outer darkness of utter disorder, 
a prison whose bolts will never draw back unless 
Eternal Love without hears the voice of penitence 
within. 

As we thus look at retribution in the mingled 
light of revelation and reason, we are prepared to 
understand why it is that some sins are punished 
in this world, while other sins await punishment in 
a future world. 

If we were to classify the sins that reap their 
painful consequences here, and those that do not, 
we would find that the former are offenses that 



328 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

pertain to the body, and the order of this world ; 
and that the latter pertain more directly to the 
spiritual nature. The classification is not sharp ; 
the parts shade into one another > but it is as ac- 
curate as is the distinction between the two depart- 
ments of our nature. In his physical and social 
nature man was made under the laws of this world. 
If he breaks these laws, the penalty is inflicted here. 
It may continue hereafter, for the grave feature of 
penalty is that it does not tend to end, but con- 
tinues to act, like force imparted to an object in 
a vacuum, until arrested by some outside power. 
But man is also under spiritual laws, — reverence, 
humility, love, self-denial, purity, and all that are 
commonly known as moral duties. If he offends 
against these, he may incur but little of painful 
consequence. There may be much of evil conse- 
quence, but the phase of suffering lies farther on. 
The soil and atmosphere of this world are not 
adapted to bring it to full fruitage. 

Stating our distinction again : punishment in this 
world follows the sins of the grosser part of our 
nature, — that part which more specially belongs to 
this world, — sins against the order of nature, against 
the body ; sins of self-indulgence and sins against 
societ}^. The punishment that awaits the next 
world is of sins pertaining to the higher nature, 
sins against the mind, the affections, and the spirit. 
The seed of evil sown in the soil of this world 
comes to judgment here. The seed of evil sown in 
the hidden places of the spirit, does not bear full 
fruit till the spiritual world is reached. Man is 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 329 

coordinated to two worlds. They overlap and reach 
far into one another ; the spiritual inter-penetrates 
the physical ; and the physical sends unceasing in- 
fluences into the spiritual. Still, each is a field 
whereon evil reaps its appropriate harvest. 

Illustrations of the first confront us on every 
side ; judgment pronounced and executed here ; sin 
punished here. Take the commonest but most in- 
structive example — drunkenness. As soon as de- 
sire becomes stronger than the will, it begins to 
act retributively. When appetite dictates to the 
moral nature, the man's feet touch the threshold of 
hell. The shame, the conscious weakness, the un- 
satisfied desire rising at last to torment, — what are 
these but the pains of hell ? But the full cycle of 
sin and penalty is not completed except in his body. 
Bloated and distorted in countenance, senses be- 
numbed, powers enfeebled, blood fevered, nerves 
tremulous as the aspen, haunted by visions, con- 
sumed by inward fires ; but every pain, every thrill 
of weakened nerves, every enfeebled sense, each tot- 
tering step of the debased flesh towards the dust, 
is the proper penalty of this kind of sin. Having 
sown to the flesh, he reaps of the flesh corruption. 
His sin works out its penalty on its own ground. 
I do not say that it ends here, because it is also 
linked with an order more enduring than this world. 
For, as one standing over against a mountain may 
fill the whole valley with the clamor of shouting, 
but hears at length an echo as if from another 
world, so these sins, having yielded their first fruits 
here, may stir up vaster penalties hereafter. Th^ 



330 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

terrible feature of penalty, so far as any light is 
thrown upon it from its own nature, is that it can- 
not anticipate an end. It is a cause, and cause 
always works. It is seed, and the law of seed is 
endless growth. Penalty, by its own nature, must 
go on forever unless it meets a stronger opposing 
power. 

The subject finds various illustration: indolence 
eating the scant bread of poverty; willful youth- 
hood begetting a fretful and sour old age ; selfish- 
ness leading to isolation ; ambition overreaching it- 
self and falling into contempt ; ignorance yielding 
endless mistake ; worldly content turning first into 
apathy, then into disgust ; these every-day facts 
show that if we sin against the order of this world, 
we are punished in this world. If we sin against 
the body we are punished in the body. If we 
break the laws of human society, it has immediate 
and appropriate penalties. Each after its own kind, 
and in its own time, is the universal law. 

We turn now to the other point, namely, that 
sins against the spiritual nature do not incur full 
punishment here, but await it in the spiritual 
world. 

We constantly see men going through life with 
little pain or misfortune, perhaps with less than the 
ordinarj^ share of human suffering, yet we term 
them sinners. They do not love nor fear God ; 
they have no true love for man ; they reject the 
law of self-denial and the dutv of ministration ; 
they stand off from any direct relations to God ; 
they do not pray ; their motives are selfish ; their 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 331 

temper is worldly ; they are devoid of what are 
called graces except as mere germs or chance out- 
growths, and make no recognition of them as 
forming the substance of true character. Such men 
break the laws of God, and of their own nature, as 
really as does the drunkard, but they meet with 
little apparent punishment. There may be inward 
discomfort, pangs of conscience at times, a painful 
sense of wrongness, a dim sense of lack, but nothing 
that bears the stamp of penalty. These discomforts 
grow less, and at last leave the man quite at ease. 
The petty and inevitable troubles of life are not 
the punishments of such sin ; they do not awaken 
a conviction that they proceed from sin. But the 
drunkard, the sluggard, the voluptuary, know that 
their sufferings are the penalties of their sins. 
These men seem to be sinning without punishment, 
and often infer that they do not deserve it. The 
reason of the difference is plain. They keep the 
laws that pertain to this world, and so do not come 
in the way of their penalties. They are temperate, 
and are blessed with health. They are shrewd and 
economical, and amass wealth. They are prudent 
and avoid calamities. They are worldly wise, and 
thus secure worldly advantages. Courteous in man- 
ners, understanding well the intricacies of life, care- 
ful in device and action, they secure the good and 
avoid the evil of the world. If there were no other 
world, they would be the wisest men, because they 
best obey the laws of their condition. But man 
covers two worlds, and he must settle with each 
before his destiny is decided : he may pass the judg- 



832 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

ment seat of one acquitted, but stand convicted be- 
fore the other. It is as truly a law of our nature 
that we shall worship as that we shall eat. If one 
starves his body he reaps the fruit of emaciation 
and disease. But one may starve his soul and none 
remark it. This world is not the background upon 
which such processes appear, or they appear but 
dimly ; but when the spiritual world is reached, this 
spiritual crime will show itself. 

When, a half century ago, the famous Kaspar 
Hauser appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, hav- 
ing been released from a dungeon in which he had 
been confined from infancy, having never seen the 
face or heard the voice of man, nor gone without 
the walls of his prison, nor seen the full light of 
day, a distinguished lawyer in Germany wrote a 
legal history of the case which he entitled, " A 
Crime against the Life of the Soul." It was well 
named. There is something unspeakably horrible 
in that mysterious page of history. To exclude a 
child not only from the light, but from its kind ; to 
seal up the avenues of knowledge that are open to 
the most degraded savage ; to force back upon it- 
self every outgoing of the nature till the poor vic- 
tim becomes a mockery before its Creator, is an 
un measurable crime ; it is an attempt to undo God's 
work. But it is no worse than the treatment some 
men bestow upon their own souls. If reverence is 
repressed, and the eternal heavens are walled out 
from view ; if the sense of immortality is smoth- 
ered ; if the spirit is not taught to clothe itself in 
spiritual garments, and to walk in spiritual ways: 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 333 

such conduct can hardly be classed except as a 
crime against the life of the soul. 

But one thing is certain. As the poor German 
youth was at length thrust out into the world for 
which he was so unfitted, with untrained senses in 
a world of sense, without speech in a world of 
language, with a dormant mind in a world of 
thought, — so many go out of this world, — with no 
preparation in that part of their nature that will 
most be called into use. There the soul will be in 
its own realm ; it will live unto itself, a spirit unto 
spiritual things. What darkness, what confusion, 
what bewilderment, what harrowing perplexity 
must the unspiritual soul feel when it enters the 
spiritual world ! A spiritual air to breathe ; spir- 
itual works to do ; a spiritual life to live, but the 
spirit impotent ! If there has been absolute per- 
version of the moral nature here, it must assert it- 
self there in the sharpest forms, but the natural 
penalty of the greater part of human sin is dark- 
ness. For the greater part of sin consists in with- 
holding from the soul what it needs ; in low con- 
tentedness with this world, in refusing to look into 
the heavens that insphere us. This is the condem- 
nation, that men have loved darkness. And the 
penalty of loving darkness, is darkness : a soul out 
of keeping with its condition, and therefore bewil- 
dered, dazzled by light it cannot endure, or blind 
from the disused sense, it matters not which ; it is 
equally in darkness. A true life in this world is 
indeed the best preparation for the world to come ; 
but it must not be forgotten that the chief dutie!^ 



334 THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 

in this world are spiritual, and that spiritual heav- 
ens overarch this world as well as the next. 

I hope this discourse will awaken within us a 
living sense of the certainty of the punishment of sins 
here and hereafter. It is not strange that the world 
of thinking men reject it when it is taught as some 
far off, arbitrary, outside infliction by God in vindi- 
cation of his government, the issue of some special 
sentence after special inquisition. This is unlike 
Ood, it has no analogy, no vindication in the Scrip- 
tures ; it is artificial, coarse, unreasonable. It is 
just now the special scoff of the world, but the scoff 
is the echo of unreasoning words reiterated till the 
world was weary of them. Carry the subject over 
into the field of cause and effect and we find it irra- 
diated by the double light of reason and revelation. 
It takes on a necessary aspect. Penalty is seen to 
be a natural thing, like the growing of seed. It is 
not a matter that God, in his sovereignty, will take 
up after a time, but is a part of his ever-acting 
law. 

The question of penalty is not to be settled by 
yea or nay count ; it cannot be set aside by a sneer 
of fine oratory ; nor is it the pliant tool of system- 
building theology on either side ; it is not a ques- 
tion to be settled with men, nor with revelation 
only, but with the order of nature, with the soul 
under law, with God as the author of nature and 
the framer of law. The pain that now attends dis» 
obedience is a proof and pledge that all broken law 
will reap its appropriate pain: each offense after 
its kind, and in its own time. It is not a matter of 



isa 



THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 335 

text or decree, but of law which is also te:^t and de- 
cree, even all texts and all decrees. 

Does any one, turning aside from the certainty 
and fitness of future punishment, ask how long, or 
how brief, are God's penalties ? — questions needless 
under the principles laid down. How long? So 
long as sin reaps its consequences. How brief? 
JSTot till the uttermost farthing of defrauded order 
and wronged justice is paid back to the ordainer of 
order and justice ; not till the darkness-loving eyes 
open to the light, and the self-centered affections 
turn to God. Will this happen "at last — far off 
— at last, to all ? " The answer is hidden in the 
mystery of personality. The logic of the gospel is 
salvation, and the secret of the universe is joy ; " so 
runs my dream ; " so we read with our finite eyes, 
but these same eyes discern also a shadow they 
cannot pierce. ♦ 

The worthier question is, How shall I avoid the 
sin ? Or, having sinned, how shall I be rid of it ? 
How shall I turn back its stream of fatal tendency, 
which, if not checked by some all-powerful hand, 
must flow on, so far as the sinner can see, for- 
ever? 



THE JUDGMENT. 



"When the future life begins, every man will see Christ as He is, an(3 
the sight of Him may of itself bring a finality to his character and des-. 
tiny, as it discovers each man fully to himself." — President Porter, 
New-Englander, 1878. 

*' It only requires a different and apportioned organization — the body 
celestial instead of the body terrestrial — to bring before every human 
soul the collective experience of his whole past experience. And this, 
— this, perchance, is the dread Book of Judgment, in whose mysterious 
hieroglyphics everj*- idle word is recorded. Yea, in the very nature of a 
living spirit it may be more possible that heaven and earth should pass 
away, than that a single act, a single thought, should be loosened or lost 
from that living chain of causes, to all whose links, conscious or uncon-x 
scious, the free will, our absolute self, is coextensive and co-present." — 
Coleridge. 

"We are to think of the Judgment not as an event, limited to a specific 
' day,' but as a process, which runs its course throughout the whole ex- 
istence of the responsible subjects of law." — Whiton, Gospel of the 
Resurrection, page 144. 

" Death, if I am right, is, in the first place, the separation from one 
another of two things, soul and body, nothing else. And after they are 
separated they retain their several characteristics, which are much the 
same as in life. . . . When a man is stripped of his body, all the natural 
and acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view." — Plato, 
Georgias. 



THE JUDGMENT.i 



** And I saw the dead, the small and the great, standing before the 
throne; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, 
which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things 
which were written in the books, according to their works." — Revela- 
tion XX. 12. 

It is related of Daniel Webster, the regality of 
whose moral endowment no one disputes, that when 
once asked what was the greatest thought that had 
ever occupied his mind, he replied, " The fact of 
my personal accountability to God." 

A common definition of man is that he is an ac- 
countable being. The epithet carries a world of 
meaning. It differentiates man from the rest of 
creation. Consciously accountable for conduct, — 

1 It is not within the proper scope of a sermon to treat this subject 
with that close criticism it is now receiving from theological scholars ; 
for this I refer m}' readers to such works as Dr. Mulford's Republic of 
God, and Dr. Whiton's Gospel of the Resurrection, — two notable addi- 
tions of the da}^ to theology. While I fully accept their teaching that 
Judgment is a constantly recurring crisis, I also recognize the fact that 
it has an objective basis in the changes that attend man's personal his- 
tory. Thus, a change of worlds is followed by judgment, — the change 
evokes judgment; thus, "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after 
this Cometh judgment." But the Scriptures do not indicate that this 
judgment involves finality as distinguished from previous jidgments; it 
ma?/ involve it, but not necessarily, and only as successive judgments or 
crises point towards finality. Finalit}' is to be found in character, and 
not in judgment, except as a crisis tends to develop and fix character. 
The true substance of judgment is to be sought in subjective moral con- 
ditions, and not in external governmental arrangements. 



840 THE JUDGMENT. 

this makes man man. Eliminate accountability, 
and lie drops into the category of instinct and 
natural desire ; if he is a savage, he becomes a 
beast; if he is civilized, he becomes virtually a 
criminal. The great leading question in goverun 
ment, in society, in religion, in individual life, is 
how to awaken and render active a sense of account- 
ability. It is the factor that stands between free- 
dom and law ; free to obey law ; an inwrought 
sense demanding this use of freedom. 

Freedom and conscience imply accountability ; 
accountability implies rendering account, and this 
implies a judgment; such is the logic that covers 
human life, few and simple in its links, but strong 
as adamant, and inexorable as fate. It underlies 
and binds together the twofold kingdom of time 
and eternity, — one chain, whether it binds things 
in heaven, or things on the earth. 

No one of these coordinate facts is widely separ- 
ated from the others. The sense of accountability 
is all the while acting ; we are constantly rendering 
account ; we are all the while undergoing judgment 
and receiving its awards. 

It is the weakness of formulated theology that it 
arbitrarily transfers the most august and moving 
leatures of God's moral government to a future 
world, thus placing the wide and mysterious gulf 
of time and death between actions and their mo- 
tives. It is an axiom in morals that the nearer 
motive commonly determines the conduct ; hence it 
should be as close as possible. The wisdom of this 
is hinted in the speed with which sujffering overtakes 






THE JUDGMENT. 341 

any infringement of the laws of existence. That 
which threatens to end life quickly, causes quick 
suffering. The moment we touch fire we are burned ; 
the sentence of broken law is executed at once. 
And all broken law begins at once to incur judg- 
ment; the quick pang of conscience that follows 
sin is the first stroke of judgment; while under- 
going it, the soul is passing a crisis, and turns to the 
right or the left hand of eternal righteousness. 

Thus we are all the while rendering account to 
the laws without and within ; we are all the while 
undergoing judgment and receiving sentence of ac- 
quittal or condemnation. It does not follow, how- 
ever, that because judgment is drawn forward into 
this world from the next, that it is confined to this 
world. Great moral laws have universal sweep. 
As gravitation is the same here and in Sirius, and as 
righteousness is the same in this life and in the life 
to come, so the great leading operations of our 
moral nature are the same in all worlds and in 
all times. Instead of confining judgment to the 
future, we take it out of time-relations, and make 
it a fact of eternity. It is an ever on-going pro- 
cess. Conduct is always reaching crises and enter- 
ing upon its consequences. It may be cumulative in 
degree, and reach crises more and more marked; it 
may at last reach a special crisis which shall be the 
judgment when the soul shall turn to the right or 
left of eternal destiny. 

But while this latter phase of the great truth 
may well be allowed to breathe over us an august 
and solemn influence, it should no less be remem- 



342 THE JUDGMENT. 

bered that the throne of judgment is now set, and 
that the Judge is all the while judging men and 
nations in righteousness. The powers and solemni- 
ties of eternity already enfold us. There is no 
grandeur or awfulness of future pageant that is 
not now enacting, if we had eyes to see it. It is a 
part of our moral blindness that we do not see it. 
It is the fault of theology that it does not teach 
men, as Christ taught them, that the generations 
do not pass away till the divine judgments pro- 
nounced on them are fulfilled. The most impera- 
tive moral need of the age is a belief that the sanc- 
tions of God's eternal laws are now in full force 
and action about us, asserting their majesty and 
glory in the blessings and inflictions that all the 
while flow out of them ; sure to act hereafter be- 
cause they are acting now. The kingdom of 
heaven is at hand, complete, king and sceptre, 
law and sanction ; its reign is begun, it commands, 
and judges, and rewards, and condemns. It is the 
recognition of this great moral fact, unseen by the 
world, and but half seen by theology, that is needed 
to put us where Christ stood, and to unfold to us 
the divine order as it appeared to Him. We simply 
misread — we fail of correct intellectual conception, 
— when we interpret his words upon the coming of 
the Son of Man, and his separating work, taking 
one and leaving another, as referring to some world- 
end event. In no one of his discourses does He 
declare more plainly his coming and judgment than 
in that on the destruction of the temple, but the 
generation was not to pass away before his words 
were to be fulfilled. 



THE JUDGMENT. 343 

Let us not belittle this life. There is no moment 
of time grander than the present. The ages of 
eternity will usher in no day more momentous than 
those that are now passing ; for already his fan is 
in his hand, and He is separating the wheat from 
the chaff, taking one and leaving another. Already 
and evermore are we passing through crises or judg- 
ments that turn us into right or left hand paths. 
The providential event, or the moral conviction that 
tests our character and gives it tendency, is a com- 
ing and judgment of the Son of Man. For judg- 
ment does not consist in assigning the reward or 
penalty — that is done by the laws, but in discern- 
ing between right and wrong, and separating them. 
It consists in making manifest, as St. Paul says : 
" We shall all " — not appear — but " he made man- 
ifest before the judgment seat of Christ." But 
while recognizing the need of holding to the per- 
petual coming of the Son of Man for judgment^ 
thus making this life the full theatre for the action 
of his eternal kingdom, we also recognize the truth 
that judgment is a fact of the life to come. 

A profound view of judgment as a test or crisis 
entailing separation, shows us that it attends 
change ; for it is through change that the moral na- 
ture is aroused to special action. It is a law that 
catastrophes awaken conscience. Indeed, all great 
outward changes, of whatever character, appeal to 
the moral faculties. They are God's opportunities 
for getting access to the soul. It is also a peculiarity 
of the action of the moral nature under great out- 
ward changes, that man is disclosed to himself, 



844 THE JUDGMENT. 

Recall the most joyful event of yonr lives, and you 
will find it to have been also a period of great self' 
knowledge. Recall your deepest sorrow and you 
will still more vividly recognize it as an experience 
in which there was a deep, interior measurement 
of yourself. Recall the chief catastrophe of your 
life, the loss by fire, the failure in business, and you 
will confess that the manner in which you bore it 
has become a sort of test by which you estimate 
your character. You got a fair look at yourself, 
that had much to do with your future. 

If change has this revealing and judging power, 
the change of worlds must have it in a superlative 
degree. There are no moral laws and forces there 
that are not also here, for the kingdom of heaven is 
upon earth, but they may act with greater intensity 
because of our own changed relation to them. An- 
other world, another body, other senses, other rela- 
tions, the dimness of earth gone, the clear unre- 
fracting light of eternity shining around us ; here 
is a change that the Judge may well use and name 
as the judgment of all. It is appointed unto men 
once to die, and after that cometh judgment ; the 
testing and unveiling of character and conduct. 
Preeminently, far beyond anything that has pre- 
ceded, man is then judged and assigned his true 
place and direction. 

I do not claim to understand and harmonize the 
many symbolical references to future judgment in 
the Bible. But any attempt to harmonize them 
under a conception of one general assize, one event, 
one day, one assembly of the vast humanity, is vaia 



THE JUDGMENT. 345 

and useless ; it is too incongruous, too difficult of 
conception to justify itself. The fact that all the 
Biblical references are symbolical, indicates that the 
bare method and procedure of judgment do not 
easily come within the range of human thought. 
Revelation wisely dresses its great moral operations 
in objective forms — parables, and visions, and sym- 
bols, — a drapery that we may throw aside as soon 
as we have eyes to see the bare and simple truth it 
unfolds. Thus Christ taught, first the parable, then 
its interpretation. 

I think the central truth of the judgment can no- 
where more easily be got at than in the passage 
before us. No other symbol than that of hooks 
could so vividly convey the fact that the whole life 
comes into judgment. Nothing is left out or for- 
gotten ; there can be no mistake. The books are 
the unerring transcript of the life. The simplicity 
of the symbol is marred by the introduction of " an- 
other book " than those recording the works. Why 
is there "another book which is the book of life ; " 
and what does it mean ? All exegesis of the Apoc- 
alypse is doubtful, involving as it does, facts that 
transcend conception. Here and there are rifts 
in the surging clouds of symbolism through which 
we seem to get some clear glimpses of " things 
to come," but we must not be too confident. Per- 
haps we are interpreting best, when we bow be- 
fore the mysterious words and say, " Thou, O Lord, 
knowest, we do not." Still let us humbly venture 
a reply. 

Mankind do not go up to the throne of God to be 



346 THE JUDGMENT. 

judged simply by their works. Parallel with hu- 
manity is the Kingdom of Heaven. Parallel with 
men's deeds are the purposes of God. Over and 
above what humanity does of itself is a plan of re- 
demption, the working out of which enters into hu- 
man destiny. It may be that the other book repre- 
sents that other power, and the influences that flow 
out of the life of Christ. It is a book of life, and 
He is the life of the world. Men are judged by the 
records of their works, but it may be that the sen- 
tence pronounced is affected by what is written in 
the book of life. I am aware that this complicates 
the thought, but we must remember that the prob- 
lem of spiritual destiny is not absolutely simple. It 
has other elements than mere goodness and badness. 
It involves the divine will, a reconciliation, a work 
wrought upon humanity as well as by it ; it has a 
God-ward as well as a man-ward side. Nor is it 
strange that a question involving such a mystery as 
evil should be hard to answer. With an unknow- 
able element in the problem, who shall solve it? 
And when this or that is asserted about eternal 
destiny on either side, as though it were a matter 
of alphabetic plainness, we say, " Explain evil, be- 
fore you assert its consequences." While the way 
of life is plain, so that even a little child may walk 
in it, it is overhung by mysteries whose shadows 
deepen as it leads into the future. 

But we will leave this side issue and turn to the 
main thought : the books out of which men are 
judged. We say at once, "Books, records, items of 
conduct written down in order ! how can there be 



THE JUDGMENT. 347 

such things in a spiritual world ? — earthly things 
after the earth itself has vanished ? " There can 
indeed be no books, but there may be something 
that corresponds to books ; no records, items of con- 
duct, engraved or engrossed, but there may be some- 
thing that answers the purpose of records. There 
may be no reading of charges, or rehearsal of deeds, 
but there may be something that shall make every- 
thing known and evident. Where shall we look, 
to what shall we turn, for such a solution ? I do 
not think we are permitted to go outside of nature 
and its divine laws for answer. The books must 
be found in God, or nature, or man. The mind of 
God must indeed be a tablet whereon are written 
all the works of men, but let us not touch that in- 
effable mystery without warrant. Science, in the 
person of some of its high priests, has suggested 
that all the deeds of men are conserved as distinct 
forces in the ether that fills the spaces of heaven, 
and may be brought together again in true form, in 
some new cosmos, as light traversing space as mo- 
tion, is turned to heat when arrested by the earth. 
But we can find no link between such a fact, if it 
be a fact, and the moral process of judgment. We 
must search man himself for the elements of his 
great account. 

There is more in man than we have yet com- 
passed. He is a deep down which the plummet of 
science has not yet sunk. We look at ourselves, 
and say : " Here I am, a body with five senses ; a 
mind that thinks and chooses ; a soul' that enjoys 
and suffers and loves and worships ; a grand cate- 



348 THE JUDGMENT. 

gory of faculties, something worthy of immortal- 
ity ?" but we have not reached the bottom of oar 
nature. A closer analysis, or chance revelations as 
in dreams or abnormal conditions, indicate faculties 
that slumber, or exist in germ, that may awaken, 
or grow into fullness. We do not yet know the 
capacity or reach of our most evident powers. Let 
a fit of anger or the delirium of disease, or some 
great excitement like that of battle, possess the 
body, and resources of physical strength are devel- 
oped not common to it. Horatius holds the bridge 
against an army. Achilles in his wrath slays the 
mighty Hector. The sick, in the delirium of fever, 
pass from utter weakness to herculean strength; 
even the body is an unmeasured force. 

Take the mind : at first it is merely a set of 
faculties, without even self-consciousness, but con- 
tact with the world brings them into action, — first 
observation, then memory; soon the imagination 
spreads its folded wings ; then comes the process of 
comparison and combination, and thus the full pro- 
cess of thinking is developed, — a process to which 
there is no end, and the capacities of which are 
immeasurable. When we reach the limit of our 
own powers, we open the pages of some great mas- 
ter of thought, and there find new realms that re- 
veal corresponding powers. 

Take the soul : there are faculties that exist only 
in germ till certain periods of life arise. The child 
knows nothing of the love that breaks in upon the 
youth with its rapturous pain and yearning of insa- 
tiable desire, flooding the heights of his being, but 



THE JUDGMENT. 849 

the capacity was in the child. The soft touch of a 
babe's hand unlocks new rooms in the heart of the 
mother. New relations, new stages of life, disclose 
new powers and reveal the mj^steries of our being. 
We are all the while finding out new agencies in 
nature ; even its component parts are not yet all 
discovered, while the forces developed by combina- 
tion are doubtless immeasurable in number and 
degree. It is a most suggestive fact that the bring- 
ing together of two or three simple substances de- 
velops that prodigious force seen in the stronger 
explosives. If mere combination of material things 
yields such results, what may new scenes and new 
contact not do for the soul ; what new powers, 
what new experiences may not follow when the 
spirit breathes ethereal air, and the eyes look on 
the whiteness of God's throne ! It is the specialty 
of man that his nature is an unsounded deep. A 
handful of acorns covers a mountain-side with for- 
est, — a sufficient mystery when we think of it, — 
but there it ends, in simple immense reproduction. 
But man, being made in the image of God, is stored 
with endless capacities, for he has a long journey 
before him down the endless ages, and new powers 
will be needed, — fresh wings as he mounts into 
higher atmospheres. Such a theme must be touched 
reverently, but I know nothing to forbid us regard- 
ing the soul of man as a seed dropped from God's 
own self into this earthy soil, here to begin its 
endless growth back towards its source, — an end 
never to be attained, because limiting conditions 
have been assumed, but still at an ever lessening 



350 THE JUDGMENT. 

distance. What other dream can cover so well the 
majesty and mystery of our nature? 

But we need not let our thought travel so wide 
from absolute knowledge in order to find a capacity 
that shall uphold the fact of future judgment. Take 
the memory, the faculty through which the con^ 
sciousness of identity is preserved. With so im- 
portant a function to fulfill, it is altogether probable 
that its action is absolute, that is, it never forgets. 
We cannot understand its action, but probably we 
speak accurately when we say that an impression is 
made upon the mind. The theory that memory is 
a physical act, and therefore cannot outlast death, 
is untenable. Matter, having no real identity, can- 
not uphold a sense of identity, which is the real 
office of memory. The impression of what we do, 
say, hear, see, feel, and think, is stamped upon the 
mind. An enduring matrix receives the impres- 
sion ; is it probable that it is ever lost ? We think 
we forget, but our thought is corrected by every- 
day experience. The recalling of what was lost, 
shows that the forgotten impression remains true. 
The mind wearied by toil forgets at night, but re- 
members when sleep has refreshed the body. The 
body forgot ; the mind retained its knowledge. How 
significant ! If death is sleep, with what freshness 
will the mind resume its offices when its new morn- 
ing dawns upon it ! We forget the faces we have 
seen, but on the first fresh glimpse we remember 
them. We revisit scenes that long since had faded 
from memory, but the new sight uncovers the old 
impression. Even so slight a thing as a note of 



THE JUDGMENT. 361 

music, or a perfume, will bring up scenes long ago 
forgotten ; a strain of music, and a face that bad 
grown dim to memory, comes back from the dead in 
all its freshness. I never hear a certain hymn but 
a scene of my childhood plants itself before me 
with such vividness that all else fades out, and I 
can see nothing beside: a little country school-house 
dimly lighted for evening service, and a small com- 
pany of neighbors and kindred assembled for prayer 
and praise. I have heard the symphonies of the 
great masters, and choruses sung by vast multi- 
tudes, but above them all I can hear the hymn that 
bore up the supplicating praise of that little assem- 
bly, and I doubt not I shall hear it when I hear the 
song of Moses and the Lamb, for it mingled with 
the foundations of my beginning. And who has 
not by chance taken in the perfume of new-mown 
hay, and by that subtle breath been borne back to 
the early home, the hill-side, the winding river, 
and the dear companionship of the past ? It is a 
most significant fact that so slight a thing can thus 
stir and uncover the depths of memory. You are 
all familiar with the common fact that persons re- 
suscitated from drowning uniformly speak of that 
flash of inner light by which their entire lives pass 
in order before them. What can this be but a 
prelude to what follows every death. — the begin- 
ning of a revelation that only fails of completion 
through chance ? How plainly does it suggest that 
nothing is forgotten, and that death unlocks the 
chambers of memory, revealing all the deeds done 
in the body. If so, it must be for a purpose ; there 



552 THE JUDGMENT. 

must be some special intent in this divine ordinance 
by which revelation attends great change. You 
are also familiar with the often quoted incident, — 
commented on by Coleridge, — of the servant-maid 
of a German professor, who, while ill of fever, re- 
peated long phrases of Greek and Hebrew, having 
by chance, when well, heard her master utter them 
aloud. How delicate the tablet that receives such 
impressions, how tenacious in its keeping, and yet 
how sure to render them up ! DeQuincey, a pro- 
found observer upon the subject, says that when 
under the influences of opium, the most trifling in- 
cidents of his early life would pass again and again 
before his distempered vision, varying their form, 
but the same in substance. These incidents, which 
were originally somewhat painful, would swell into 
vast proportions of agony, and rise into the most 
appalling 'catastrophes. This was the action of a 
diseased nature, but it indicates what shape our 
lives may assume if viewed at last through the 
medium of a sin-diseased soul. The body may be a 
clog upon the soul, but it keeps down what is evil 
as well as what is good. Thcs^e is no doubt but 
that all the nobleness and exce-lence of our nature 
will spring into full sight and ac^^^ion when this clog 
is taken off ; and there is like certainty that the 
evil within us will stand forth in 'equal clearness of 
light. Death is simply the removal of conditions, 
the unveiling and making manifest of the whole 
man. 

Not only does the memory retain conduct, but all 
impressions upon the soul remain imbedded within 



THE JUDGMENT. 353 

it. Nothing is lost that has once happened to it. 
Nature is a wonderful conserver of what takes place 
in its realm. Science has been showing us of late 
something of the force residing in the actinic rays 
of light, by which it transfers impressions from one 
object to another. Wherever light goes, it carries 
and leaves images. The trees mirror one another, 
and opposing mountains wear each the likeness of 
the other upon their rocky breasts. These fine 
properties in nature suggest corresponding proba- 
bilities in man. It is poor logic to accept these 
fresh miracles of nature that are being so often 
revealed, and hold that we have compassed man 
and his possibilities. If such a process as this 
is going on in the dull substances without, how 
much more surely is it going on in the soul. All 
contact leaves its mark. We are taking into ourr 
selves the world about us, the society in which we 
move, the impress of every sympathetic contact 
with good or evil, and we shall carry them with 
us forever. We do not pass through a world for 
nought, — it follows us because it has become a part 
of us. 

It may be said that these impressions are so nu- 
merous and conflicting that they can yield no dis- 
tinct picture hereafter. But we must not limit the 
capacity of the soul in this respect, in the presence 
of greater mysteries. In some sense, it may pre- 
sent, as it were, a continually fresh surface. A 
most apt illustration waits upon our thought drawn 
from the palimpsests found in the monasteries of 
Italy ; parchments that, centuries ago, were in- 

23 



354 THE JUDGMENT. 

scribed with the history or laws of heathen Rome, 
the edicts of persecuting emperors, or the annals 
of conquest. When the church arose, the same 
parchments were used again to record the legends 
and prayers of the saints. Later still, they were 
put to further use in rehearsing the speculations of 
the school-men, or the revival of letters, yet pre- 
senting but one written surface. But modern sci- 
ence has learned to uncover these overlaid writings 
one after another, finding upon one surface the 
speculations of learning, the prayers of the church, 
and the blasphemies of paganism. And so it may 
be with the tablets of the soul, written over and 
over again, but no writing ever effaced, they wait 
for the master-hand that shall uncover them to 
be read of all. What are these Apocalyptic books 
but records of our works printed upon our hearts ? 
What are the books opened but man opened to 
himself ? 

This is a view of the judgment that men cannot 
scoff at. Its elements are provided ; its forces are 
at work ; it lies within the scope of every man's 
knowledge. It is but the whole of what we already 
know in part. Even now sin draws off by itself, 
shunning the light of day and the gaze of good 
men ; hereafter the separation will be complete. 
Even now good and evil stamp their works upon 
the face, configuring the whole body to their like- 
ness ; there the soul will stand forth in all its act- 
ual proportions, and this standing forth is that 
opening of the books which goes before judgment. 
It is man opened to himself ; opened also to the 
universe of intelligent beings. 



THE JUDGMENT. 355 

As there are powers in man that render judg- 
ment possible, so there are conditions on the other 
side that cooperate. One cannot be judged except 
there be one who judges. Man is judged by man; 
nothing else were fit. The deflections from per- 
fect humanity cannot be measured except by the 
standard of perfect humanity. Hence it is the Son 
of Man, the humanity of God, who judges, \yhen 
man meets Him, all is plain. His perfection is the 
test ; He furnishes the contrast that repels, or the 
likeness that draws. This then is judgment : man 
revealed by the unveiling of his life, and tested by 
the Son of Man. 

I have striven so to present it that we shall feel 
its certaint}^ It is not an arbitrary arrangement 
of the future, dissociated from the laws of our na- 
ture, but it is their inevitable outworking. Its pre- 
liminary process, its foreshadowings, are part of 
present experience. Just in the degree in which 
character discloses itself, does the judgment of sep- 
aration take place. Possibly there may be one here 
whose heart and life are vile, whose mind is the 
nest of evil thoughts, whose desires run unchecked 
into baseness ; and by the side of such a one may 
sit another, pure in heart and life. They sit side 
by side, and may go hence together, may even 
dwell under the same roof, and break bread to- 
gether, but if they were suddenly revealed to one 
another, soul to soul, with no veil of flesh between, 
one all fair and pure, the other dark and foul, they 
would by instinct separate and fly apart. And 
the judgment is this only, — a separation. There 



356 THE JUDGMENT. 

will be no need that the judge shall point to the 
right or the left. Each will go to his own place, 
is all the while going thither, by the law of his own 
nature. 

The theme has one lesson for us all, — a lesson 
of preparation. 

Prepare by repentance for sin, by faith in Christ, 
by fellowship with the Spirit. 

Prepare by honest thought, by self-denial, by 
unending struggle after righteousness, by spiritual 
aspiration. 

Thus prepared, the opening of the book of our 
life will bring no shock or shame, and the judgment 
will but conduct us a step nearer to that throne 
from which heaven and earth have fled away. 



LIFE A GAESr. 



" Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower-^ 
We will grieve not, rather find 
Strength in what remains behind; 
In the primal sympathy 
Which, having been, must ever be ; 
In the soothing thoughts that spring 
Out of human suffering; 
In the faith that looks through death, 
In the years that bring the philosophic mind." 

Wordsworth, Ode on Immortality. 

" The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill togetherj 
our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not ; and our 
crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues." — AlVs 
Well That Ends Well, iv. 3. 

" Silent rushes the swift Lord 
Through ruined systems still restored, 
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, 
Plants with worlds the wilderness ; 
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow 
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. 
House and tenant go to ground. 
Lost in God, in Godhead found." 

Emerson, Threnody. 

" Draw, Holy Ghost, Thy seven-fold veil 
Between us and the fires of youth; 
Breathe, Holy Ghost, Thy freshening gale, 
Our fever' d brow in age to soothe." 

Christian Year; Confirmation, 






LIFE A GAIN. 



"I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." — 
St. John, x. 10. 

Theeb is a strange question that has come under 
discussion of late, — a question symbolizing the au- 
dacity of the age and something of its lack of rev- 
erence, — namely, "Is life worth living?" The 
book that made it a title is nearly forgotten, but 
the question still enters into the speculations of the 
schools and into the common talk of men. It 
seems strange that any one should ask the question 
in soberness and sincerity, and as though it were 
debatable, until we recollect that a philosophy has 
won for itself recognition that has for its main thesis 
that life is not worth living because this is not only 
a bad world, but the worst possible world. It is 
not difficult to detect the genesis of this brave phi- 
losophy. So soon as one begins to doubt the good- 
ness of God, or to suspect ever so vaguely that God 
is not infinitely good, one begins to doubt if life has 
much value. So soon as there is a suspicion that 
there is not an eternal goodness behind and under 
life, it changes color and grows cheap and poor. 

It happens just now that in several directions the 
goodness of God, or, at least, the proofs of it are 



360 LIFE A GAIN. 

being questioned. The philosopher is still stum- 
bling over the problem of the ages, the existence of 
evil, with partial but not entire relief in the doc- 
trine of evolution ; the why is simply carried farther 
back. The scientists, many of them, are * saying 
that for their part they see no clear evidence of a 
creating goodness ; see much indeed that looks in 
an opposite direction, or simple indifference to hap- 
piness. The reactions of an intense age, and the 
revelations of motives in a state of society in vrhich 
there is no secrecy, an age strong in analysis but 
weak in synthesis, favor the same tendency. Sud- 
denly, the world seems to have discovered that it 
suffers, and that man is selfish ; it can dissect life 
with alarming accuracy, but it has not yet learned 
to put it together. When there is doubt as to 
the source, there will be doubt of the value of 
whatever flows from it. If God is not good, his 
greatest gift may not be good. If the infinite force 
does not act beneficently, no inferior force can 
evolve any good. If the eternal tide flows with 
indifference to happiness, happiness will be a mat- 
ter of chance. The more impatient overleap all 
reasoning on either side, and ask. If man was made 
to be happy, why is he not happy ? — not an easy 
question to answer nor a good one to ask. The 
questioner has no advantage because answer is dif- 
ficult, and he has the disadvantage of being forced 
to answer it himself ; if he is presumptuous he will 
attempt it; if he is wise, he will say, I have not 
the data, and will " trust the larger hope." 

The question with which we started involves an 



LIFE A GAIN. 361 

audacity that almost forbids its utterance. We 
might perhaps question a feature of life, but to 
turn face to face upon existence itself and doubt its 
worth, to point life with an interrogation, — thought 
can go no farther in audacity, — a thing not identi- 
cal with courage, but rather with that folly which 
dares the sphinx that slays if the riddle is unsolved. 
If we get an answer in the negative, we cannot 
avoid the wish that the earth were shorn of life and 
swinging once more on its round, a mute, dead 
world, and the farther wish that creation itself 
were blotted out, and if creation, also the Creator. 
This is logical, but to sweep infinite space and eter- 
nal duration clean of matter and being, to empty 
and then annihilate the universe, — such audacity 
reaches beyond sublimity, and sinks into the ridicu- 
lous. The Puritan mother of Samuel Mills, who, 
when her son, under the stress of morbid religious 
feeling, cried out, " Oh, that I had never been born," 
said to him, " My son, you are born, and you can- 
not help it," was more philosophical than he who 
says, " I am, but I wish I were not." A philosophy 
that flies in the face of the existing and the inevita- 
ble, forfeits its name. And a philosophy which, 
having found out that life is undesirable, proposes 
to get rid of it, — the position of the pessimist- school, 
namely, to educate the race to the wisdom of uni- 
versal and simultaneous suicide, — has, at least, a 
diJBQcult matter in hand, the end of which need not 
awaken concern. There is some other issue before 
mankind than self-extinction. Life may get to ap- 
pear very poor and worthless, but the greater part 



362 LIFE A GAIN. 

will prefer to live it out to the end. Great nature 
has us in hand, and, while allowing us a certain 
liberty, and even wildness of conduct, has barriers 
beyond which we cannot go. "You may rail at 
existence," she says, "but you cannot escape it." 
It may be impossible to escape by what is termed 
self-destruction. We were not consulted as to the 
beginning of existence ; it may be that we can have 
no voice as to its end. We may throw ourselves 
over the battlements of the life that now holds us, 
but who can say that we may not be seized by the 
mysterious force that first sent us here, and be 
thrust back into this world, or some other no better, 
to complete an existence over which we have no 
power ? If a malignant or indifferent force evolved 
human existence, it is probable that, by reason of 
these very qualities, it will continue this existence; 
were it to permit extinction it would violate its own 
nature. A being made or evolved cannot outmaster 
or outwit the being or force from which it sprang ? 

'"T is not within tiie force of fate, 
The fate conjoined to separate." 

If existence is so wretched that extinction is desir-* 
able, it is necessary to suppose a good God in order 
to be certain of attaining it ; no other would permit 
it. But will He not rather deliver from the misery 
and preserve the life? Whether the pessimist is 
aware of it or not, he wears the cap and bells, and 
his doleful doctrines, however soberly uttered, will 
be heard as jests. Still it is not amiss that the 
question has come up ; it has the use of turning 
the thought of the age to human life with careful 



LIFE A GAIN. 363 

scrutiny and measurement. Men have always been 
ready enough to see the evil in life ; that side of 
existence has been well attended to, but the other 
side, the good wrought into it, has not been fairly 
estimated. And especially we have been too ready 
to conclude that life is a waning process, a game 
of inevitable loss, a glory that fades away into dull- 
ness and night. The weight of uttered testimony 
leans to this side, for there is a strange property in 
human ill that draws thought to it. The great 
masters write tragedies and comedies, one in seri- 
ousness, the other in jest. "Vanity of vanities, 
all is vanity ; " " Few and evil have been the days 
of my life ; " so reiterates the moralist and sage 
of all ages, uttering, however, his feeling rather 
than his thought, pitying rather than scrutinizing 
himself. But now that men are rising up and 
calmly asserting that these estimates are a true and 
final verdict drawn from all the facts of life, that 
life is a fading glory, a vanishing process, a decep- 
tion ending in total loss, we are forced to consider 
if these representations have even the color of truth. 
For life must not be suspected. If not held as of 
supreme value it loses all value, and sinks out of 
all use ; it is the beginning and the sure prognostic 
of utter demoralization. When the glory of life 
is tarnished, it does not need to be cast away, it 
is gone already. One who holds existence cheap, 
destroys the basis of achievement ; character ia 
graduated by the estimate put upon that which 
holds character. One may die cheerfully at God's 
bidding, but only at his ; or gladly for a cause, 
but the cause must be worthy of the sacrifice. 



364 LIFE A GAIN. 

The subject is so large that only one phase of it 
will now be taken up, namely, a comparison be- 
tween what is gained and what is lost in life as it 
goes on. 

That there are gains and losses, wrought even 
into the texture of life, there is no question, but 
which are in excess, is a matter of debate. That 
multitudes make life a waning process through evil, 
there is no doubt. The real question is. Is life so 
organized that it is a process of gain rather than 
loss, with the further question if the loss does not 
subserve the gain ? 

In making this comparison we start with the fact 
that there seems to be possible but one kind of ex- 
cellence at a time. We never see a person simul- 
taneously at the height of personal beauty, of en- 
ergy, and of wisdom ; one excellence follows another. 
Hence we must not infer that, because one phase 
passes away and another comes on, there is actual 
loss ; it is possible that there may be a succession 
characterized by an ascending grade. In childhood 
there is a grace and symmetry, a certain divineness 
in movement and play of feature, that quickly dis- 
appear, but are nearer perfection than anything of 
any sort that comes after. I can see God in the 
patience and ecstasy of the saints, but not so clearly 
as in the features and movements of a little child. 
St. Sebastian holds no comparison with the sacred 
Babe in the discerning eye of art. Their angels 
behold the face of the Father, and we behold God 
in them. If this divine beauty could live on, we 
Bay, how much richer and more glorious life would 



LIFE A GAIN. 365 

be ! But it vanishes, and something less ethereal 
and more substantial comes in. We still have 
beauty, but the suggestion of divineness is gone. 
The physical is shot through with the bright flame 
of human passion, and made glorious by the kin- 
dling light of thought. The child shone with a 
beauty reflected from the creating Hand ; the youth 
is beautiful with his own feeling and thought, an 
advance in kind, but not in degree. The excellence 
is higher in kind than that of childhood, but its in* 
effable charm, the utter grace, the eye that looks 
from measureless depths into yours, unabashed be- 
cause it knows no evil, — being gazing upon being, 
as the angels may, — these are gone. But the down- 
cast eye and mounting color of youthhood are higher 
because they speak of the personality that is com- 
ing on : the divine withdraws to make room for 
the human. And then, as beauty loses its fresh- 
ness, there is a transfer of excellence from the 
physical to the intellectual and moral. A certain 
external glory passes, but now comes on courage, 
strength, imagination, and thought. And now for 
the first, life begins to yield fruit self-grown. Up 
to this point it has seemed a reflection of the world 
out of which it came ; it slowly fades as in a dis- 
solving picture, leaving less pleasing forms, but as 
we touch them, we find they are not images but 
realities. But after a long period of full personal- 
ity marked by strength and achievement, a change 
comes on that seems to be one of absolute loss. 
Energy, courage, hope, fade out by slow degrees, — 
the down-hill of life, we call it. And loss indeed it 



866 LIFE A GAIN. 

is; a fine glory, the rarest excellence yet realized, 
has passed, but it is a question if the repose of feel- 
ing, the calmness of thought, the charity of disposi- 
tion that follow, are not higher. They do not count 
so high in the ordinary estimate, for there is noth- 
ing men so admire as the resistless energy and un- 
conquerable spirit of the middle period of life. Out 
of them spring the main achievements of society, 
and it is natural to value highest that which seems 
greatest. But we should hesitate before deciding 
that life culminates in the middle, and that half of 
it is given up to its own decay. Here is a great 
improbability, at least. It may be, as in preced- 
ing periods, that one kind of excellence has yielded 
to another and higher ; that life is not like crossing 
a mountain, a climb to the summit, and an equal 
descent to the foot. It may be that life is not the 
exhaustion of a certain amount of vitality, not a 
ripening and a decay, but is a process quite differ- 
ent. It may be that it has in it a law of endless 
ascent, that life represents an unquenchable force, 
and can never be less than it is. If we take one 
view, it leaves life a sad mystery ; if the other, it 
makes it explicable, for so long as life is on the 
gain, it explains and indorses itself, — like Emer- 
son's flower, "it is its own excuse for being." But 
a life that mounts only to sink back to the same 
level, confounds thought. Now, as between these 
theories, one of which has some color of external 
facts to support it, yet leaves life sad and inexpli- 
cable, and the other of which explains it and puts 
it in harmony with other truth, we are bound to 



LIFE A GAIN. 367 

choose the latter by every principle of reason. It 
is a false logic that makes us content with mystery 
when there is any possible explanation of it. Being 
itself may be involved in eternal mystery, and may 
forever deepen as existence goes on, but the ad- 
juncts of being, its end and its relations, are solv- 
able and not parts of the " unending, endless quest." 
And if I find myself shut within a dark cave, as 
Plato pictured, I will welcome the faintest glimmer 
that seems to pla^^" about a possible opening into 
the world of light. Enough comes through to as- 
sure us that life, as ordained by God, if undisturbed 
by sin, is throughout a steady gain through a suc- 
cession of excellences, each higher in kind than the 
preceding. Just here the text has force. Sin, with- 
out doubt, breaks up this order of growth and suc- 
cession of higher qualities, and the Christ is here to 
restore it and to secure for it that growing abun- 
dance of which it is capable. But we are now 
speaking rather of the natural, inwrought order of 
life, than of rescue from its perversions. 

Let us, if we can, make a comparative estimate 
of the loss and gain as we pass our allotted years. 

1. We lose the perfection of physical life, its grace 
and exuberance. The divineness of childhood, the 
exultation in mere existence, the splendor of youth, 
the innocence that knows no guile, the faith that 
never questions, the hope that never doubts, the joy 
that knows no bounds because the limitations of 
life are not yet reached, — these all pass nway. 
" But are not these immense losses ? " we say. 
*' What can be better or greater than these ? " In 



368 LIFE A GAIN. 

a certain sense there is nothing better or higher, 
but these qualities are not properly our own ; they 
are colors laid on us, divine instincts temporarily 
wrought into us, but not actual parts of us ; they 
fall away from us because they are not. Yet they 
are not wholly and forever lost ; they recede in 
order that we may go after and get firmer hold of 
tliem. The child is guileless by nature, — the man 
because he has learned to hate a lie. The child is 
joyous, it knows not why, — God made it so ; it is 
Nature's joy rather than its own ; but a man's joy 
is the outcome of his nature reduced to harmony, 
— thought, feeling, and habit working under per- 
sonality to the same end. One is necessarily ephem- 
eral, the other is lasting, because it is the product 
of his own nature ; it may not be so complete and 
divine pf aspect, but it has become an integral and 
permanent factor of the man. The loss, therefore, 
is not so great as it seems ; it is rather a transforma- 
tion. 

2. We lose, in time, the forceful, executive quali- 
ties. We no longer undertake enterprises of pith 
and moment, or take on heavy responsibilities. 
Old men do not explore unknown continents, or 
learn new languages, or found new institutions, or 
head reforms, or undertake afresh the solid works 
of the world ; the needed energy is gone, but not 
necessarily lost ; it may have been transmuted, as 
motion is changed into heat and light. 

3. When we come to mental qualities, there ia 
smaller loss. It is sometimes thought that the 
imagination decays with years, but it rather changes 



LIFE A GAIN. 369 

its character. In youth it is more erratic, and may 
better be named as fancy ; in age it is steadier and 
more subservient to the other faculties, entering 
into them, making the judgment broader, the 
sense of truth keener, and bringing the possibili- 
ties of truth within reach of thought. In the 
greater minds the imagination rather grows than 
lessens. Sophocles, Milton, Goethe, lead a vast 
host of poets and philosophers who never waned 
in the exercise of this grandest faculty. It is to 
be doubted if there is such a thing as decay of 
mental power. When one is tired one cannot 
think, words come slowly, the thread of discourse 
is easily lost, memory is dull, the judgment loses 
its breadth, the perception its acuteness ; but a few 
hours of sleep restore the seeming loss. So what 
seems decay may pertain only to the age-wearied 
flesh ; the mind is still there, as it was in weariness 
and sleep, with all its sirength and stores. It is 
true that in the years of middle life, there is a cer- 
tain thoroughness and intensity in all things done 
or thought, that comes from strength, but the judg- 
ment is not so sure, the grasp is not so comprehen- 
sive, and the taste so correct, as later on. 

This, then, seems to be the sum of the losses 
sustained in life : a certain natural or elemental 
divineness of early childhood not to be kept as such, 
but to be lost as a divine gift, and reproduced as a 
human achievement ; the bloom and zest of youth ; 
the energy and force of maturity, and certain fea- 
tures or sides of our mental qualities. But we detect 
no loss of moral qualities, and but little of mental. 

24 



370 LIFE A GAIN. 

The order is significant: the physical changes 
utterly, the mental partially, the moral not at all, 
if the life is normal. 

What now do we gain as life goes on ? 

1. This evident progress from the lower to the 
higher must be accounted a gain. It does not 
matter how this progress is made, whether by actual 
loss of inferior qualities supplanted by higher, or 
by a transformation of forces, though the latter is 
more in accord with natural science, which asserts 
that force is indestructible, — an assertion of tre- 
mendous scope of inference; for if force is inde- 
structible, it must have a like basis or medium 
through which it acts ; thus it becomes a potent 
argument for an unending life. However this be, 
each phase of existence is so beautiful that we are 
loath to see it yield to the next; still it is a richer 
stage that comes on. A mother, enraptured with 
the perfect beauty of her babe, wishes, with foolish 
fondness, that she might keep it a babe forever, yet 
is content to see it unfold its larger life, and "round 
to a separate mind." None of us would choose, if 
we might, to go back to any previous phase, and 
stay there. We may long for the innocence of 
youth, but who would take it with its ignorance, — 
for the zest of youth, but not at the expense of 
immaturity ; for the energy of mid-life, but not at 
the cost of the repose and wide wisdom of age. 

2. Though we lose energy and courage and pres- 
ent hope, we gain in patience, and, upon the whole, 
suffer less. It is glorious to defy fortune with 
strength, but it is better to be able to bear fortune 



LIFE A GAIN. 371 

with patience. We are under illusion while we are 
pitting our energy against the forces of the world, 
but when at last we can say, " I cannot conquer but 
I can endure," we are no longer acting under illu- 
sion but in true accord with the might and majesty 
of our nature. Ulysses could not contend against 
the tempest, but he was superior to it when 

" He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart; 
Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured." 

"Man is but a reed," says Pascal, "but he is a 
thinking reed ; were the universe to crush him he 
would still be more noble than that which kills him, 
for he knows that he dies, and the universe knows 
nothing of the advantage it has over him." This 
elaborated patience, and knowledge of one's rela- 
tions to life, is an immeasurable gain over the un- 
tested strength and false measurements of our ear- 
lier years. 

3. We make another gain as thought grows calm, 
and the judgment is rounded to its full strength. 
Knowledge becomes wisdom. Passion and preju- 
dice pass away from our estimates. And especially 
we gain in comprehensiveness and so lose the spirit 
of partisanship. This not only renders age valua- 
ble to the world, but it is a comfortable possession ; 
it is a deliverance from the small tempests that fret 
the surface of life. Then only, truth feeds the 
mind with its unalloyed sweetness. 

4. There is a great gain in the later years of life, 
in certain forms of love and sympathy. The passion 
of early love, its semi-selfishness, and the restriction 
and prejudice of early sympathy, pass away, but 



872 LIFE A GAIN. 

love itself remains in all its strength, purer, calmer, 
more universal. It takes on a yearning quality, it 
pities, it forgives and overlooks, it bears and hopes 
and forgets, and so is like God's own love. Early 
love is intense but it is without knowledge, but that 
of age is calm and broad because it is wise. Es- 
pecially does the grace of charity belong to full 
years. The old are more merciful than the young ; 
they judge more kindly and forgive more readily. 
Hence they are poor disciplinarians, but their fault 
is rather their virtue ; they are not called to that 
duty. This changing and expanding form of the 
supreme principle of our nature has great signifi- 
cance in the question before us. At no time are 
we let from under its power ; at first an instinct, 
then a conscious passion for one, but blind ; then a 
down-reaching tenderness for children, wiser and 
more patient; then an out-reaching to humanity, 
moved by conscience and guided by knowledge ; 
and at last a pitiful, universal sympathy that allies 
itself to the Eternal Love. Here is a gain that is 
simply immeasurable, spanning the breadth be- 
tween the unconscious instinct of the child and the 
method of God's own heart. 

There is also in advanced years a mingling and 
merging of the faculties, one in another. Thought 
has more faith in it and faith more thought ; reason 
more feeling and feeling more reason; logic and 
sentiment melt into each other ; courage is tem- 
pered with prudence, and prudence gets strength 
and courage from wisdom ; joys have in them more 
Borrow and sorrows more joy ; if it has less zest it 



LIFE A GAIN. 373 

touclies the mind at more points, wMle sorrows lose 
their keenness by falling under the whole range of 
faculties. An old man does not feel the same rap- 
ture before a landscape as one younger, but he sees 
it with more eyes, so to speak ; his whole nature 
sees it, while the youth regards it with only the one 
eye of beauty. This united action of the mind, 
this cooperation of all the faculties, is something far 
higher than the disjointed experiences of early life. 
It is like the action of the Divine Mind in which 
every faculty interpenetrates every other, making 
God one and perfect. And in man, it is an intima- 
tion that he is approaching the Divine Mind, and 
getting ready, as it were, for the company of God. 

Life is a fire, yet not to blast and reduce to ashes, 
but to fuse. It takes a vast assemblage of qualities 
and faculties most unlike and often discordant, and 
reduces them first to harmony and then to oneness. 
Consider how man is made up ; under a simple 
bond of self-consciousness a set of qualities not oth- 
erwise related, warring against each other ; good 
and evil passions, selfishness and love, pride and 
humility, prudence and folly, mental faculties so 
unlike at first as to antagonize each other ; the log- 
ical faculty opposed to imagination, reason to senti- 
ment, the senses demanding one verdict and the 
conscience another, — such a world is man at the out- 
set. Life is the reconciliation of these diversities 
and antagonisms ; the process may be attended by 
apparent loss, but only apparent. The law of the 
conservation of forces holds here as in the physical 
world. In the fire of life, the form is melted away 



374 LIFE A GAIN. 

from each quality, but only that their forces may 
flow together and be fused into one general force 
that shall set towards the Eternal Righteousness. 
Thus there comes on that process and condition of 
life which is called a mellowing. When the growth 
is normal and is unhindered by gross or deep-seated 
sin, a change or development takes place in nearly 
all that is well described by this word. The man 
ripens, his heart grows soft, he speaks more kindly. 
A rich autumnal tint overspreads his thoughts and 
acts. He looks into the faces of little children with 
a brooding tenderness. He finds it hard to distin- 
guish between the faults and the vices of the young. 
He hates no longer anything except a lie, and that 
because it contradicts the order into which he has 
come. He draws no sharp, condemnatory lines 
about conduct, but says to all offenders, " Go and 
sin no more." His pride dies away ; he no longer 
cherishes distinctions, but talks freely with the 
humble and has no awe before the great ; he for- 
gets his old notions of dignity, and is a companion 
with his gardener or with the President. This 
state is sometimes regarded' as weakness, and as 
though it sprang from dulled faculties, but it is 
simply the moral qualities come into preponderance, 
or rather the equilibrium of all the forces. Life 
has ripened its fruits, and the man begins to feel 
and act like God. Something of the divine pa- 
tience and charity and wisdom begin to show in 
him, and we now see why God made him in his 
own image, and gave him his life to live. If life 
can start at the point of mere existence, and thence 



LIFE A GAIN. 875 

grow up into likeness to God, it is worth living. 
And if life reaches so far, we may be sure it will 
go on. If it gets to the point of laying hold of 
God, and begins to feel and act like God, it will 
never relax its hold, it will never cease from action 
so essentially and eternally valuable. There is the 
same reason for the continued existence of such a 
being as of God Himself ; that which is like the 
Best must, for that very reason, live on with the 
Best. We can no more conceive of God suffering 
such a one to go out of existence than that a 
good father would put to death his child most like 
himself because of the likeness. 

This line of thought has force only in the degree 
in which life is norm? 1, but the fact that it is not 
wholly such does not break up or foil the divine 
intention wrought into it. For there is a provision 
in humanity against its own failures. Life of itself 
may not reach its proper fullness, but One is in 
humanity who is redeeming it from its failures and 
filling its cup even to overflow. Nor is the sadness 
of age an indication of real loss ; it may have an- 
other meaning : — 

"The clouds that, gather round the setting sun, 
Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." 

It may be a wise provision for attenuating the 
thread that holds us to this world. The main fea- 
ture of life is not its sorrow or its joy, nor even its 
right or wrong doing. Its main feature is that, 
starting at the bare point of existence, it grows 
with such stride and rapidity that it yields first a 



376 LIFE A GAIN. 

person, and then reaches up to God, into whose 
affinities and likeness it enters as a partaker. The 
space between the infant and a mind walking in 
conscious oneness with God marks a gain so im- 
mense, so rich and wonderful, that we cannot meas- 
ure it. It is from such a stand-point that the value 
of life is to be estimated, and not from the amount 
of sorrow and happiness, nor from any failure 
through evil. What is evil when there is a soul 
of goodness in all things ? What is sin when it is 
redeemable ? What is a little more or a little less 
of suffering when such gain is possible ? What are 
toils and what are storms, when such a port is to 
be reached ? The plan seems almost indifferent to 
happiness and to evil, utilizing one and contending 
against the other, while it presses steadily towards 
this gigantic gain, the growth of a soul from simple 
consciousness into God-likeness. 

It is somewhat the fashion now to derogate from 
the dignity and glory of life. There is doubt that 
it leads to anything besides its own end ; a weak- 
ened sense of God suggests a poor and low estimate 
of it.. " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die," is a sentiment that hovers in the air. There is 
no way to prevent it from becoming the watchword 
of society, but by a fresh incoming of faith in God 
as the Father of men and the Ordainer of life with 
its laws and ends, — facts not left to the wayward- 
ness of our human reason, but revealed in a true 
Son of God who incarnated the full glory and per- 
fection of life, and makes it abundant for everj 
other child of God. 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 



"Man IS, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other pos- 
session but Hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope." 
— Sartor Eesartus, ii. 7. 

" Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas. 
Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please." 

Faerie Queen, i. 9. 

" The preliminary step to following Christ is the leaving the dead to 
burj"- the dead, not clamoring on his doctrine for an especial solution of 
difficulties which are referable to the general problem of the Universe." 

Robert Browning's Essay on Shelley. 



L 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 



" Until the day break, and the shadows flee away." — The Song op 
Solomon, ii. 17. 

I DO not know the nature of the feeling out of 
which these words sprang. It may be hard to de- 
termine whether it was a human or a divine rap- 
ture, whether it enfolded only some Jewish lover, 
or whether, under such chaste and tender symbols, 
it uttered the yearning delight of God in his church. 
It hardly matters which ; a true love is as sacred 
as a holy church, for the church is but the Lamb's 
wife. They stand on the sacred page, in their 
tender beauty, like a golden sunset which to one 
may be only a " promise of a fair to-morrow," to 
another a simple refraction of light, to another a 
symbol of eternal repose and glory. The meaning of 
words lies not wholly in the words themselves, but 
also in us. Whatever the first use and intent of this 
phrase, it describes a waiting, and a joy to come, a 
waiting under darkness and shadow, and a joy to 
come with the light. And so they answer well the 
purpose of suggesting the truth of which I shall 
speak, namely, that there are many things in life 
and destiny that are to be awaited. 

Man, in his inmost being, is not keyed to the 
temporal, but to the eternal. The final solution of 



380 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

life is not to be found in the past, the present, or 
the future, but in a state named eternity, in which 
" time shall be no longer," — a state unconditioned 
by a material body and by cycles of time, — a state 
of absolute freedom and of unfettered existence ; 
whatever the man is, that he is perfectly, whether 
good or bad. I do not mean that he will be per- 
fectly good or bad, but that there will remain on 
him no condition nor limitation of his character. 
At present, there are weights and checks on the 
expression of character ; in the eternal state there 
are none ; it has absolute expression, and works in 
perfect freedom to its proper end, whether it be 
good or evil. But here and now man is put into 
relations of time, and, while character is always 
mounting towards this eternal state as into a native 
ether, it is shaped in and by time. Past, present, 
and future, are realities that we cannot escape. As 
Carlyle says : " The curtains of yesterday drop 
down ; the curtains of to-morrow roll up, but yes- 
terday and to-morrow both are." The maxims that 
bid us forget the past, and trust the future, and 
live in the present, while they contain a half truth, 
hold also an insidious error. We cannot forget the 
past, and we ought not to forget it ; we can be in- 
sensible to the future, but we ought not to be 
insensible to it. It is by the forfeiture of our great- 
ness and essential nature, that we put the main 
emphasis of life upon the present. All the past 
is shut up within us, and is a sort of perpetual 
present. All the future is before us, and though 
duty is a present thing, it is constructed out of the 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 381 

past, and runs endlessly into the future. We thus 
have the past with its memories, the present with 
its duties, and the future with its anticipations, — 
one for wisdom, one for action, and one for hope, — 
a trinity of temporal environment holding man until 
he is ready to be let into eternity. Eternity now 
is, but we enter its fullness by the path of futurity, 
and so, in common speech, we treat as one the eter- 
nal and the future worlds. 

Despite the brave assertion of the present as the 
only field of action, and so, by narrow inference, of 
thought, the future plays a large part in life and 
character. " One world at a time," is a motto for 
a brute and not for a man. To stand before the fu- 
ture world as before a dead wall, is an attitude to 
which we are not called ; we are not made after 
that fashion, but are keyed to anticipation and 
hope ; and if so, then we are keyed to a world in 
which hope has fulfillment, and not to a world in 
which it is a steadil}^ dissolving illusion. Anticipa- 
tion and hope are not mere features of a religious 
faith, but essential conditions of true living, hands 
and feet by which we travel towards, and lay hold 
of, our destiny. Hence there are many things that 
belong to us which are put into the future, and are 
therefore to be awaited ; and since we are put into 
this relation of waiting^ we must not fret because 
we do not have them, nor strive to get them before 
they are due. 

We can speak confidently of such things only as 
we now know in part, beginnings that here have 
no completion, germs that come to leaf and bud, 



382 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

but not to fruit, in the soil of this world ; processes 
that have promise of great results but are cut 
short of them, desires and aspirations that now have 
no full satisfaction. 

1. We wait for rest. If the question were raised : 
is man made for toil or for rest ? the answer would 
be a mixed and qualified one. He is appointed to 
toil, he is destined to rest ; one is his condition, the 
other is his end. If man is made in God's image, 
he is made to share in God's condition ; and both 
Christian revelation and heathen conjecture unite 
in conceiving of Deity as in repose, eternally acting 
yet in eternal rest. This is no contradiction, but a 
simple necessity when the powers are infinite and 
harmonious. Ruskin, in one of his most thoughtful 
passages, has aptly touched the truth : " As op- 
posed to passion, changefulness, and laborious exer- 
tion, repose is the especial and separating charac- 
teristic of the eternal mind and power ; it is the ' I 
am ' of the Creator opposed to the * I become ' of all 
creatures. The desire of rest planted in the heart 
is no sensual nor unworthy one, but a longing for 
renovation, and for escape from a state whose every 
phase is a mere preparation for another equally 
transitory, to one in which permanence shall have 
become possible through perfection." As we grow 
in this image and pass beyond its early limitations, 
we approach this eternal rest ; it remains for the 
children of God. If it be said that man can 
never attain this repose because he can never reach 
the eternal perfection and power, it may be an- 
swered that it does not depend upon the propor- 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 383 

tions of the being, but upon the harmony of his 
powers and upon his adjustment to his external 
condition. One whose nature has been reduced to 
perfect harmony may have perfect peace within, 
and also without, if also he is in a world entirely 
adapted to him. But we have not this rest at pres- 
ent except in some foretaste of it in our spirit. Un- 
ceasing toil is the largest feature of human life. It 
is divinely appointed, but it is painful ; it is a blesS' 
ing, but also a suffering; an evil thing, but with a 
soul of goodness in it. It is wise, for, if remitted, 
vice creeps in, but it is no less a bond that chafes, a 
burden that weighs down, a trial that wearies the 
spirit. It walls in virtue and undergirds character, 
yet it is the most pathetic feature of human society. 
As the sun journeys about the earth, it summons 
the greater part of those it shines on to hard and 
heavy toil till its setting dismisses them to brief 
rest. And this rest is chiefly found in sleep, the 
nightly death to life, as though rest were no part of 
man's conscious life. Let us not regard as fancy 
this hint thrown out by the order of nature. When 
man would rest, he is taken out of this conscious 
world into one, how unlike ! but because unlike to 
this, like to some other in which rest is the main 
feature. If we die, in a sense, to this daily life of 
toil, to get rest, and thus go off into a world of 
freedom that is revealed to us by fragments of 
chance-remembered dreams, how surely is it an in- 
timation that the other death ushers us into a world 
of absolute freedom and repose; for freedom and 
repose are correlatives. Weariness does not come 



384 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

from action but from restraints put on action. 
There is a spiritual vis inertice. As a world moves 
with tireless motion in a void, so the mind may act 
in perpetual vigor and freshness when the resist- 
ances of time are taken off. Hence "there is no 
night there ; " hence He " neither slumbers nor 
sleeps." To all else, to bird and to beast, the sun 
brings joy, but to man only toil. How much wea- 
riness, how much ache of body and disease, how 
much lethargy of mind and cramping of powers, 
how much vain longing and bitter complaint and 
sullen endurance and despair, it yields, it were im- 
possible to tell. But no feeling heart can dwell on 
it a moment, and not break with unavailing sympa- 
thy. And yet, in itself, it is the great blessing of 
this life. " Thank God for work," is the cry of 
every wise heart. As society goes on, it will lessen 
its severity and take away some of its sharpest 
stings, but it will never eliminate the fact. The 
moment toil is exchanged for leisure, a gate is 
opened to vice. When wealth takes off the neces- 
sity of labor and invites to idleness, nature executes 
her sharpest revenge upon such infraction of the 
present order ; the idle rich live next door to ruin. 
How strange a condition ! Made for rest ; made in 
the image of Him who dwells in eternal repose, yet 
when we stretch out our hand for the likeness, the 
fiery sword that guards this tree of life scorches us 
with deadly flame ! How shall we explain it ? Here 
is toil, our lot, our necessity, wrought into the hu- 
man order, our safeguard against evil, but full of 
essential pain, uncongenial, out of keeping with 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 385 

what is deepest in us, at odds with conscious des- 
tiny; how shall we carry the conflicting elements 
in our mind ? I answer, that rest is something to 
be awaited in God's own time. To unduly seize it, 
is ruin ; it breaks the mould in which our life is 
cast. To patiently wait for it makes toil endur- 
able, and assures us that our external lives are not 
a mockery of the hopes wrought into us. Some 
morning, this shadow will flee away. In the church 
of St. Nazaro in Florence is an epitaph upon the 
tomb of a soldier, as fit for the whole toiling race 
as for his own restless life : " Johannes Divultius, 
who never rested, rests, — hush ! " We say of our 
dead, "they rest from their labors." Whatever the 
future world may be to us or require of us, it is not 
clothed in the guise of toil, but offers seats of eter- 
nal rest ; it is the contrast of earth, the other side 
of mortal existence as spirit is the other side of 
matter. 

2. We wait for the renewal of lost powers. 

However we answer the question, if life is a pro- 
cess of loss or gain, it cannot be denied that real or 
apparent loss is one of its largest features, even 
when life is at its best. Is this loss absolute, or 
do we regain that which seems to pass ? If the 
former, it puts a hard and almost despairing look 
upon existence. We come into life dowered with 
good, — high instincts, noble emotions, graces of 
person and spirit, faculties divine in their free- 
dom, — imprints that testify to our divine creation. 
Surely God made us, and his work justifies Him ! 
But all this glory and grace that invest us at the 

25 



} 



386 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

outset, — these divine touches left on us by the crea= 
tive hand, — pass away. The freshness, the beauty, 
the glory, the innocence, the boundless vitality, the 
native hope, the instinctive faith, the high pur- 
pose, fade out. Something better, or something 
that better serves a present purpose, may take their 
place : still they are good, — glories put on us by 
God's ovirn hand. And if any say they are but 
natural, only so much the more are they divine. 
Shall I never, — so we are forced to ask ourselves, 
— shall I never have again the buoyancy of youth, 
the zest, the innocence, the unquestioning faith, the 
ardent desire and unconquerable will, the bounding 
vigor of body and mind, with which I began life? 
We do not get half way through our allotted years 
before these riches are gone from us. If they are 
gone forever, one half of life, at least, is spent 
under an ever-deepening shadow. It is difficult to 
believe that existence is so ordered ; that God's 
increated gifts are annihilated ; that the impress 
of his hands, the similitudes of Himself, are blotted 
out forever. It were unendurable for us, it were 
like a waste on the part of God, if these first riches 
of our being are to perish. It is easier to conceive 
of this mysterious soul that we are, as a garner 
in which whatever is good is preserved ; that it 
hives the sweetness of life for future use, as bees 
Aive honey for winter's need ; that, as a flower 
folds its beauty and perfume in the husk-clad seed, 
and will produce them again, so these first excel- 
lences are hidden in the enfoldings of this life, to 
reappear when the spiritual body shall blossom 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 387 

into its eternal state. St. Paul speaks of the re- 
demption of the body as something that is waited 
for. He means no narrow doctrine of a physical 
resurrection, but a renewal of existence, — a restora- 
tion of lost powers. 

It changes the whole color of life, and its char- 
acter also, if we take the one view or the other, — 
if we regard existence as a dying-out process, or as 
passing into temporary eclipse, to emerge with all 
its past glories when the shadows of death flee 
away. 

3. We wait for the full perfecting of character. 

I do not mean, of course, that we are to wait in 
the sense of relaxing effort after perfection, — such 
waiting may end in an eternal failure of character, 
but rather that the effort that now only partially 
succeeds will finally reach success. 

There is nothing that weighs more heavily upon 
a right-minded man than the slow progress he 
makes in overcoming his faults. Here we are at 
twenty, with the faults of childhood upon us: 
peevish, ungoverned, insatiable ; at thirty, with 
the faults of youth : vain, inconsiderate, pleasure- 
loving ; at forty, still wearing the badges of early 
folly : proud, passionate, sensual ; at fifty or sixty, 
but not yet wise with the experience of life : selfish 
still, unsympathetic, ambitious, full of conscious 
weaknesses, and perhaps with an ill-repressed brood 
of evil habits, and the characteristic vice of age, 
'^- avarice. Yet all the while we may have been 
striving after the good, curbing the evil, keeping 
our faces heavenward, all the while aiming to fear 



o88 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

God and keep his commandments, never at any 
time wholly giving up the strife after ideal excel- 
lence. This, after all, is the tragical feature of life, 
that it is linked with so much failure in character ; 
that it is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise ; 
for goodness, and we are not good ; for overcoming 
evil, and evil remains ; for patience and sympathy 
and self-command and love, and yet we are fretful 
and hard and weak and selfish. This makes the 
bitterness of death, and calls out the cry. Vanity 
of vanities, all is vanity ! There is nothing a right- 
minded man desires so much as entire right-minded- 
ness. Will it never come ? Yes, — but it must be 
awaited. Entireness is nowhere a feature of pres- 
ent existence, else it could not be a world of hope 
and promise. On no thing can we lay our hand 
and say, Here is finality and perfection. The ada- 
mant is crumbling to dust ; the orderly heavens os- 
cillate towards final dissolution, and foretell " new 
heavens ; " in every soul is weakness and fault. We 
are keyed not to attainment, but to the hope of it 
by struggle towards it. And it is the struggle, and 
not the attainment, that measures character and 
foreshadows destiny. Character is not determined 
by faults and weaknesses, and periodic phases of 
life, nor by the limitations and accidents of present 
existence, but by the central purpose, the inmost 
desire of the heart. If that be turned towards 
God and his righteousness, it must at last bring 
us thither. 

4. We await the renewal of sundered love. 

When love loses its object its charm is inter- 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 389 

rupted, for love is oneness and cannot orook sepa- 
ration. It is impossible to believe that God has 
organized into life an incurable sorrow ; that He 
has made love, which is the best conceivable thing, 
— being the substance of Himself, — the neces- 
sary condition of the greatest misery. If man will- 
fully perverts love so that it becomes this, it were 
another matter, but that God has so ordered exist- 
ence that love is thwarted into unquenchable sor- 
row, it is impossible to believe. If this were so, 
we no longer have a good God. But what is infi- 
nite sorrow, what is greatest misery, but love sun- 
dered by hopeless death ? There is but one gate 
that leads out of this labyrinth of mortal perplex- 
ity, one thing and one only will make life other 
than a curse, namely, a belief that love, being eter- 
nal in its nature, will have an eternal realization. 
Hence, we do not believe that death is an end of 
love's oneness. Love may suffer an eclipse, but it 
is not sent wailing into eternal shadows. It is as 
sure as God Himself that human love shall again 
claim its own. Will He have his, and not give us 
ours ? Will the Father of men keep his children 
forever in his conscious heart, and not let me have 
mine ? There is nothing in this universe of min- 
gled light and shadow so sure as this. But this 
eternal union must be awaited. It begins here, 
springing out of mysterious oneness ; it grows up 
amidst unspeakable tenderness, rising from an in- 
stinctive thing to an intellectual and moral union, 
losing nothing, and weaving into itself every strand 
of human sympathy till it stands for the whole sub- 



390 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

stance of life, and so vanishes from the scene. If 
this prime reality is an illusion, then all else is. If 
it does not outlast death, then all may go. But 
love is not a vain thing, and God does not mock 
Himself and us when He makes us partakers of his 
nature. ' 

"What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent; 
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain, 
Heart's love will meet thee again." 

5. We wait for the mystery to be taken off from 
life. 

The crucial test of a thoughtful mind is a sense 
of the mystery of life in this world. The mind 
that regards everything as common, as a matter 
of course, has not begun to think. One who has 
even once put the question, Whyf before life, its 
origin, its relation to matter, its purpose, may be 
accounted thoughtful. The main feature of the 
highest intellectuality is that of awe and question 
before the mystery of being and destiny. This is 
the reason that such names as Plato, Shakespeare, 
Goethe, Shelley, Pascal, Emerson, Hawthorne, and 
^' Geo. Eliot," are placed so high in the list of 
greatness ; whatever their treatment of the mystery 
of life, they have the deepest sense of it. It is this 
that makes Hamlet greater than Macbeth : one is a 
plain picture of a human passion ; the other depicts 
a man who is brooding on the mystery of life. The 
critics cannot explain the drama ; nor could Shake- 
speare himself have explained it ; the difficulty lies 
in the subject. It is this that takes such a man as 
Robertson out of the ranks of ordinary preachers 



MMBHaiiiiaii 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 391 

and puts him by himself. This highest order of 
mind is not antagonistic to faith ; it is simply con- 
scious of the incomprehensible range of truth. 
None but an inferior mind has a plan of the uni- 
verse ; it is to the thoughtless that all things are 
plain. What is life? What is matter ? What is 
the relation between them? What is creation? 
Granting evolution, what started the evolving pro- 
cess ? Assuming God, what is the relation of crea- 
tion to Him ? What the relation of man ? What 
is this that thinks and wills and loves — this J.^ 
And then, what is it all for? Is there a final pur- 
pose and an order tending to it, or is it but the 
whirl of molecules, the dust of the universe circling 
for a moment in space, of which we are but some 
atoms? Is there a bridge between consciousness 
and the external world, or a gulf that cannot be 
spanned or fathomed ? Is life a reality, or is it a 
dream from which we may awake in some world of 
reality to find that this world was but the vision oi 
a night ? We are born out of sleep ; we die into 
sleep. Are we truly awake between ? What cer- 
tainty is there that these senses convey true reports 
of the outer world, acd that it may not be a phan- 
tasm, a projected play of our own consciousness that 
may vanish some momep'^ like a dissolving cloud ? 
These are questions that are never absent from the 
great minds ; they send their color into the sonnets 
and plays of Shakespeare; they prompt the phi- 
losophies from Pythagoras down ; they tinge the 
great poems ; they rise in every thoughtful mind 
whenever he looks into the heavens at night, or 



392 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

listens to the endless murmur of the sea, or con- 
siders the mystery involved in touch and sight and 
sound, or takes in the sweep of the generations, 
one coming and another going, forcing the ques- 
tion — Whence ? Whither ? 

It is useless to deny that this mystery carries 
with it a sense of pain. It is alien to mind, a con- 
dition foreign to our nature. And the more thor- 
oughly mind is true to itself, the more painfully 
does it feel the darkness. When Goethe, dying, 
said, " Let the light enter," he uttered, not the 
highest and best hope of the heart, but the dearest 
satisfaction of the intellect. He felt that he was 
going where the shadows that hang over this world 
would flee away, and he could find some answer to 
the questions that had vexed him here. 

So, too, those commoner questions. Why does 
evil exist ? Why do the innocent suffer ? Why 
does one suffer on account of another ? Why does 
life end untimely ? Why is man so subject to na- 
ture ? Why is the experience of life so long in 
ripening the fruit of wisdom? Why are the chances 
so against man that he spends his days in sorrow 
and evil ? Why is there not more help from God ? 
Why does life gradually assume the appearance of 
a doom, spent in vanity and ending in death ? We 
get no full answer to these questions in this life. 
We make some petty syllogisms about freedom as 
the necessary condition of good, and evil as inci- 
dental to the best possible system, and the like, — 
true enough they are, perchance, but they are not 
answers ; they simply throw the questions a little 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 393 

farther back. Our faith teaches us submission and 
trust, but it does not tell us why these things are 
so. And because they are not explained, some blas- 
pheme, and some despair, and some make the mys- 
tery an excuse for sin : " it is all a tangle — let us 
eat and drink." 

Shall these questions never be answered ? It is 
not easy to believe that mind will forever be har- 
assed by an alien element ; it may always require 
something other than itself to stand upon, or as a 
foil like that which the jewel-merchant puts under 
precious stones to reflect their color, but it will not 
forever wear this other as a clog and burden. It is 
the function of mind to know, its proper element 
is knowledge and certainty. Insolvable mystery, 
especially such as involves pain, cannot well be a 
permanent and final feature of existence. Being 
itself may forever remain a mystery, and may 
deepen as existence goes on, but it involves no suf- 
fering, it is simply inexplicable w"onder at self. 
But these other shadows that cloud life, these ques- 
tions that tire and fret us with their importunity, 
yet admit of no sure answer ; these problems that 
often render faith well-nigh impossible, and prompt 
us to "curse God and die ;" these slowly vanish 
when the great light of eternity dawns on us. That 
were a poor world if it did not do this for us. 
Mystery may remain, but it will be harmonious 
mystery. The accusing doubt, the seeming con- 
tradiction, the painful uncertainty, will pass away, 
and we shall see " face to face " and know even as 
we have been known. 



394 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

If the grounds of this expectation are asked for, 
we find them in these words of St. Paul : we shall 
know as God knows. The mystery of the present 
life is due to the fact that it is so heavily condi- 
tioned by its material environment; matter con- 
tends against spirit. But as existence goes on, if 
it is normal, it throws off these conditions and 
presses towards absolute action and full freedom. 
This is the eternal state, and this action is eternal 
life, and the world where it is achieved is the eter- 
nal world. The whole process and condition is 
illustrated in the Christ. His peace was perfect, 
his joy was full, He knew that God heard Him, He 
saw the Father, He dwelt in light, and so his whole 
life had the freedom and certainty and perfection 
of eternity. One with Christ by faith here and 
now, yet overshadowed by clouds and beset with 
struggles, we await the hour, not " troubled " nor 
" comfortless," when we shall be with Him where 
He is, in the light of the shadowless "eternal 
noon." 

6. We wait for full restoration to the presence of 
God. 

I do not forget that through Christ we come to 
the Father ; that the obedience of the Son is the 
path that leads to the Father's house. There is no 
truth but that truth, no way but that way, no life 
but that life ; there is no other name under heaven 
by which men can be saved, because that name 
carries with it the elements and methods of salva- 
tion. All this is true, but it is an unfulfilled pro- 
cess. There is a knowledge and presence of God 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 395 

for which we long that is not met even m Christ, 
for He Himself was as one who waited for a joy set 
before Him ; He Himself was about to go to the 
Father's house, not yet having come to it. The 
perfection of Christ's revelation of God does not 
consist in an entire uncovering of God, but in 
showing a way that leads to God. Much indeed 
He reveals, his heart of love, his righteous will, 
but we demand more than knowledge of those we 
love : we demand presence, sight, contact. When 
Christ was teaching the people, He had all knowl- 
edge of God, but when the weary day was past. He 
climbed the mountain — alone — if, in the remote 
and solitary height, and in the deeper solitude of 
darkness. He might get some closer sight of God. 
Jacob, on his way to meet Esau, well enough knew 
there was a God above hira, but that was not 
enough, and so he wrestled till daybreak for a reve- 
lation that should be more than knowledge. " Tell 
me thy name," show me thy very self, is the cry of 
his needy heart. 

Whether we have come to the hour of conscious 
need or not, it is the demand of every one of us. 
There are hours when the whole world, and all it 
contains, shrivels to nothingness, and God alone 
fills the mind ; hours of human desolation, seasons 
of strange, mysterious exaltation, times of earthly 
despair, or of joy ; the height and excess of any 
emotion bears us away into a region where God 
Himself dwells. But even if we have taught our- 
selves to make the impression of these hours con- 
stant, there is still an unsatisfied element in the 



396 THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 

knowledge. We long for more, for nearness, for 
sight or something that stands for sight, for the 
Father at hand, and the home of the soul. I know 
that in many and many of God's children there is 
a longing for God that is not satisfied, because they 
are children and are away from the Father's house. 
And I know still better that the unrest of this 
weary world is its unvoiced cry after God. 

This full, satisfying presence of God, must be 
awaited. It is contended against by sense, by the 
world of things, by the limits that shut out the in- 
finite, and by our own slow and hesitating depar- 
ture from the evil and the sensual, — a muddy vesture 
of decay doth grossly close us in ; but when this 
falls off, and these earthly shadows flee away, we 
shall see face to face, and know as we are known. 

In showing that there are many things that are 
to be awaited, even till another life, I am aware 
how perilously near we run to the suggestion that, 
if these things are so, strife after the best, and 
most we can get in this world, may be relaxed. 
But we must not forget that all truth is double; 
we strive, we wait. There is no doubt but this 
life and world are mainly keyed to struggle, that 
man is a doer and not a waiter. The main pur- 
pose of life should be to get all the good out of it 
possible. Force from nature all the sweetness you 
can ; wring from the earth all her richness ; get all 
the joy possible from sight and sense and sound ; 
test to the utmost the ministering power of every- 
thing and relation ; wait for nothing that you may 
have by proper effort. This is our great, human 



THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 397 

privilege, but when we have used it to the utmost, 
there will be many things we want that we have 
not gained. The greatest things, the most vital, 
do not lie within the scope of our powers, yet as 
they belong to us they may be confidently awaited. 
We are free, but we are also bound ; but our life 
and nature reach beyond our limitations, and lay 
claim to what is beyond our present reach. 

This is a great truth ; it uncovers the divine part 
of us. To live with only a recognition of our pres- 
ent possibilities, to draw all our joy and comfort 
from such things as we can now get under our 
touch and sight, as so many are telling us, — this, I 
conceive, to be thoroughly brutish. It makes man 
but another bird among the trees, or another insect 
humming in the evening air. But to hope and wait 
for the highest and best we can conceive, this ex- 
pands life, this stretches out its short span. This 
affords a field for the solution of its mysteries, for 
the cure of its ills, for regaining what is lost, for 
recomposing the "sweet societies " of earth, for that 
realized oneness with God which is the unceasing 
cry of the God-created spirit. 

Hence the last look at destiny is that of a seat 
in the eternal throne : all limitations ended, all 
heights surmounted, all things hoped and waited 
for gained ! 



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